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o«< io (ft< aftrwe, — This Letter, as waa very asual with Mr. Choaie'e hasty notea, bean nu date of the year. It was, h&w. 
written to the author in th« summer of l$i7. 

he allusion to the '* spot in the middle of the aea," refers to the place where his correspondent was staying at ihe tinie — 
■ue 'pf Itttid shooting into the ocean quite a distance from tbe main land. The alUieiou to " the work" aa bp.ni: ' kind to 
mains," refers to the Author's book on Mr. Choata and other oratort, caUed ** Tae Golden Age of American Oratory.' 
was just then paaiing through the preu. E. Q. P. 



REMIXISCENCES 



OF 



R U F U S C H A T E, 



THE CHEAT AMERICAN ADVOCATE. 



EDWARD Cl."^ PARKER. 



"Eloquentiuin jurispL-ritissiuius, jiirisperitonirn eloquontissimus." 

Brutus, de Cluris Oratorihus. 



N E AV YORK: 

]VL.^S03Sr BROTHERS, 

Nos. 5 A 7 MERCE!l STREKT. 

1 8G 0. 



.'^ 




><P/^1^ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S5'>, 

By mason B It O T II K R S . 

In the Clerk's Oflice of the District Court for the Southern District of Xcw Vurk. 



GIFT 

MARGARET W. CUSH«N6 

JAU. 26. 1938 



BTEEEOTYPKIl 1! Y PniNTKIi li T 

T. 15. SMITH & SON, C.A. ALVORD 

S3 & 8t Beekman-Bt., N. Y. 15 Yandeivatcr-Btreet N. Y, 



T O 



THE YOUNG BAR OF BOSTON, 



w n o 



L O V i: D R U F U S C II O A T E , 

(L I) i s U [ 11 m r 



ONE OF THEIR NUMBER. 



PREF A C E. 



The lithographed letter fjicing the portrait in this 
book, is inserted as a specimen of Mr. Choate's sin- 
gular and celebrated liand-writing. It happens, also, 
to authenticate the friendly relations which subsisted 
between the subject and the author of this work, and 
to that extent is the writer's credentials to the reader 
for the authenticity of these Reminiscences. 

None of Mr. Choate's speeches are given in this 
book, as the whole body of them, it is expected, will 
be published by his family. 

Many of his forensic arguments, however, are 
given; as some of tliem are preserved, it is believed, 
only in the notes here published, and all of them are 
scattered, and difficult to find. 

To those gentlemen of the Bar who have sent 
him their memoranda of several of Mr. Choate's 
arguments, the author desires to express his grateful 
acknowledizments. 



CONTENTS. 



CIIAPTEK T. 

PAGE 

Introdcctiox to Reminiscences. — The Historic Posi- 
tion OF RUFUS Clio ATE, . . . . . .13 



CHAPTER II. 

Outline of his Like, and Personal Reminiscences, . 29 

CHAPTER ITT. 
Personal Reminiscences, ...... "79 

CHAPTER TV. 

I'tlOFESSIONAL REMINISCENCES, - . . .117 

CHAPTER V. 

Conversations with Rufus Choate, . , . .231 

CHAPTER YI. 
Extracts from Letters of Mr. Choate to the Author, . 307 



Xii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

RuFus Choate as an Orator, . . . . .321 



CIIARTER VIII. 
Forensic Arguments, ....... 354 

CHAPTER TX. 
Miscellaneous Reminiscences, ..... 489 

CHAPTER X. 

Faneuil Hall in Mourning for Him, and Everett's 

Eulogy, 506 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION TO REMINISCENCES. 



THE niSTORIC POSITION OF RUFUS CIIOATE. 



RuFus CiiOATE is to Lc ranked as — The great American 
advocate. He was an able lawyer, a shining statesman, an 
all-accomplished, man of letters ; but these are not his 
glory. His was that glory of which nightly he had dreamed, 
and for which he struggled daily from his first entrance 
upon active life — the glory of the great advocate, the ruler 
of the Twelve. To gain this particular attitude in history 
he made all his endowments and all his experiences con- 
tribute together. 

He is just buried ; and the accordant voice of the press 
and of the public, however they may difter upon other points 
in his career, rises in applauding unison to crown him the 
first Advocate that has appeared upon this continent. 

He will be remembered always as holding, in point of 
forensic advocacy, the same relation to America that Curran 
held to Ireland, and Erskine held to Great Britain. Er- 
skine and Curran had the felicity to try some causes which 
elevated their court rooms into the dignity of national Sen- 
ates. This will always give them in history a quasi states- 
man's position ; but tried as advocates, as omnipotent 
wielders of the jury, Choate is certainly worthy to rank 
as tlieir peer. 

The British advocate. Lord Erskine, lives still in form 
and stature before the eyes of his brethren of the bar, in 



14 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

the monumental marble of his statue. Curran, the great 
Irishman, lies beneath a noble pile of granite, modeled 
after the tomb of Scipio ; to wliich his admiring country- 
men bore his remains twenty-three years after his death in 
a foreign land. Eufus Choate will sleep in Mount Auburn ; 
and those who shall read upon the head-stone that simple 
name will remember that when he was placed there, Fan- 
euil Hall flung open her gates at midday, and the first of 
living orators pronounced his eulogy in the ear of America. 

In his lecture on the Study of History, addressed to 
Lord Cornbury, that oratorio philosopher Lord Boling- 
broke, after describing the profession of the law as in its 
nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind, in its 
abuse the most sordid and pernicious, rises to a high im- 
pulse of just enthusiasm as he exclaims : " There have been 
lawyers that were orators, philosophers, historians ; there 
have been Bacons, and Clarendons, my lord ; there shall 
be none such any more, till, in some better age, men learn 
to prefer fame to pelf, and climb to the vantage-ground 
of general science." This sentiment of Bolingbroke may 
aptly introduce a sketch of William Pinkney. 

There have been in our country perhaps half a dozen 
advocates of national repute as orators — Pinkney, Choate, 
Legare, Wirt, Prentiss, and Ogden Hoffman ; all of them 
quite accomplished, well read, and widely learned, and 
blending with the severer qualities of the lawyer the higher 
and more kindling attributes of the man of genius. All of 
them have in some sense seemed impressed with the force 
of this opinion of Bolingbroke ; all of them have pursued 
ideal excellence rather than gold ; all of them have grasped 
that glory which is far better than gold. But among them 
two names stand advanced by general consent as chiefs at 
the bar, beyond dispute facile princeps — two men who 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 15 

united in themselves more of the essential qualities of the 
advocate-orator, and carried those qualities to a higher 
pitch of excellence than all the rest — William Pinkney and 
Rufus Choate. The mention of the one vividly suggests 
the other. They each had a conception of professional 
attainments of original hreadth and splendor. They are 
the luminaries of the American har, each rcirent of its fir- 
mament for his own hour — the morning and the evening 
star of its most effulgent day. 

In some resjoects, too, Choate may be considered the 
pupil of Pinkney. He heard him and admired him in his 
own youth ; he has evidently studied him in his more ma- 
ture discipline of liimself, and in one prominent particular 
he closely resembles him — the mastery of a diction e\d- 
dently learned up, labored, and made a specific object of 
constant cflPort. 

But Pinkney, although a very great lawyer, was not so 
great an advocate. His power was displayed in most ample 
sweep, not before the twelve men of the people, but before 
the bench of judges of the United States Supreme Court. 
It was there he met his most formidable antagonists, there 
the ladies crowded to hear him, and upon him there the 
eyes of all the nation were often fixed. 

Choate's preeminence, on the other hand, was in dealing 
with man as man ; not educated, ermined man, but the 
mere mortal man. Him, he could magnetize and master. 

He accomplished this magical mastery not by a mere 
transitory eloquence of pathos and beauty, but by concen- 
trating vast energies upon that specific object. A singularly 
powerful yet delicate organization, a capacious yet prompt 
understanding, law learning enough for a lord Chancellor, 
and a lettered eloquence which Hortensius might have ad- 
mired ; all these were the forces in array when Choate ranged 



16 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

his power in forensic action. And then, finally, Choate had 
genius, pure genius ; Pinkney had talent, great talent, but 
still only talent. 

When Mr. Choate's arguments and addresses are pub- 
lished by his family, the world will at first be struck with 
their extravagance and eccentricity ; but a second thought 
will reveal their compact strength — the cruel steel beneath 
the purple velvet. And men will reason then, " How mys- 
terious must have been that genius which could make 
these hyperbolical metaphors serve to strike conviction 
into grave human hearts !'' 

Some ten years ago I heard Daniel Webster, in Wash- 
ington, say, " Rufus Choate is a wonderful man ; he is a 
marvel." 

Edward Everett, in his Faneuil Hall eulogy upon Mr. 
Choate, said, with discriminating panegyric, " ' There was 
no one who united to the same extent profound legal 
learning with a boundless range of reading, reasoning pow- 
ers of the highest order, and an imagination which rose on 
a bold and easy wing to the highest heaven of invention. 
With such gifts and such attainments he i:)laced himself, 
as a matter of course, not merely at the head of the jurists 
and advocates, but of the public speakers of the country. 
After hearing him at the bar, in the senate, or on the aca- 

O 7 7 

demic or j)opular platform, you felt that you had heard 
the best that could be said in either place.' He said 
Choate's eulogy on Daniel Webster at Dartmouth College 
had never been equaled by any performance of that kind 
in this country. He might have added with truth, or any 
other country." 

At the meeting of the Suffolk bar, to take honorable 
notice of his death, Mr. Richard H. Dana, speaking what 
I know must have been lying unexpressed in the heart of 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 17 

every lawyer present, said felicitously : " The ' golden bowl 
is broken/ the age of miracles has passed, the day of in- 
spiration is over ; the great conqueror, unseen and irresist- 
ible, has broken into our temple, and has carried off the 
vessels of gold, the vessels of silver, the precious stones, 
the jewels, and the ivory ; and like the priests at the tem- 
ple of Jerusalem, after the invasion from Babylon, we must 
content ourselves with serving vessels of wood, and stone, 
and of iron." 

This describes in metaphor, but not extravagantly, the 
wide interval which all Mr. Choate's compeers recognized 
as existing between his advocacy and their own. He was 
the wizard of the court room. 

It has also been truly said recently, by a writer of 
much observation of the world : "In power of severe rea- 
soning, and what Whately calls ' discovering argument,' 
on any question, Webster was the equal of Choate, and no 
more than his equal ; but in almost every other quality of 
a great orator, Webster, though gi-eat, was decidedly in- 
ferior to Choate. If the two men had been speaking on 
opposite sides of the same street, Choate would have 
drawn away Webster's audience, whether composed of the 
most common or the most learned men. That is the 
true test of the relative (Qualities of the two men as ora- 
tors. We have heard the best public speakers of England, 
such as Brougham, Stanley, now Lord Derby, Gladstone, 
the late Sir Robert Peel, and others of less note ; and 
though very able and eloquent speakers, they were not any 
of them the equals of Choate. Brougham, in his prime, 
would have come nearest to him, but not up to him. We 
doubt even whether Erskine himself, justly renowned as he 
was, ever possessed the eloquence of Choate, or the same 
command over juries. We have not the least doubt, how- 



18 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

ever, the remark may shock those who are imbued with 
too blind and ignorant a reverence for antiquity, that if 
Demosthenes had had Choate in the place of Mschinesfor 
his competitor, in the great oration for the croivn, he 
would have been beaten." 

If Mr. Choate's death calls forth such panegyric, it is 
not surprising that when alive, and actually wielding " the 
law's whole thunder," he made his country look in upon 
his court room, and enjoyed a national renown. 

I shall endeavor to present an outline of this great 
man's life, but especially and fully to present him as he 
Avas during the last fifteen years of his life. That was the 
period of my personal acquaintance with him. But I feel 
painfully how utterly im})Ossiblo it will be to frame any 
descriptions adequate to give those who never saw or heard 
him a full impression of this loonder, for such he was. I 
have heard it said, and said truly, that although Webster 
was a greater man, yet he was of a species of man compar- 
atively common ; but Choate, taken as a whole, viewing 
him as a man of action as well as reflection, was the rarest 
genius who has grown up on this side of the Atlantic. Of 
such a genius, how shall Avords tell all the story ? 

In appearance he was, though in a different way, quite 
as marked as Webster. No one who once saw him could 
ever forget him. His head, and face, and figure all equally 
signalized him. That dark, Spanish, Hidalgo-looking head, 
covered with thick raven curls, which the daughters of the 
black-eyed races might have envied ; and the flash of his 
own sad eyes, sad but burning with Italian intensity — 
What canvas shall ever bid them live again, so that men 
shall see once more our Prince of the forum ? 

In the prime and flush of his youth, when first he 
stood up before the bar and the bench of Essex county. 



REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 19 

Mr. ChoatC is described as of fascinating beauty. In his 
maturity he was not so handsome as he was striking in liis 
aspect. It was then the combination of poetry and power 
expressed in his looks, which was the source of his fascina- 
tion rather than any grace of feature. The luster lingered 
in the eye, but his Herculean toils had driven away all 
bloom from the cheek. Yet still the quick smile of singular 
beauty illuminated the weary face of the veteran ; he was 
old, but his smile was young ; and victor in so many 
fights, with the story of his conquering life stamped on 
his jaded countenance, he must have been quite as inter- 
esting a being in form and feature as when, in the beauty 
of his youth, he stood up, and Joy and Hope brightened his 
mantling crest. 

THE author's acquaintance WITH MR. CHOATE. 

Twenty years ago I heard a man say in the street in 
Boston to his companion, as they walked along, " I'd as 
soon hear this man Choate speak as Webster." I was only 
a boy then, but my young imagination about " this man 
Choate" was instantly aroused. Webster, to my boyish 
apprehension, w^as the greatest man in the world ; and for 
any one to say that anybody could speak as well as he, 
seemed to me like challenging an Olympian divinity. 

Five years after that, a lady introduced me, in Wash- 
ington, to this rival sovereign of men's homage ; and a 
little circumstance which followed led to that more inti- 
mate acquaintance from which came the conversations and 
observations which are here recorded. 

I was in Yale College, and, impatient of its various 
restraints, was anxious to start off in the world and leave 
the halls of Alma Mater at the close of the junior year. 



20 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Mr. Choate heard of it, and, with his unfailing and char- 
acteristic interest in young men, sat down at once and 
wrote to the person who had introduced me to him a long 
letter dissuading me from leaving before graduation, and 
setting forth the argument for a full collegiate education 
in such a manner that the thought was instantly aban- 
doned, and the remainder of the college course pursued 
with far greater diligence. At the close of the studies of 
colle<re and the Dane Law School, he took me into his 
office ; and from that time on I saw him almost daily till 
the close of his life. 

How fascinating and endearing he was to youth I need 
not say ; and for that reason, no less than his magnetic 
and marvelous eloquence, I observed and studied him every 
day of my life for ten years. During those years many an 
afternoon, and far into the night, I have listened to his 
conversation, not less fascinated than instructed. And to 
deepen the impression of his thoughts and suggestions, tlicy 
were alivays committed to paper on returning home. 

It seemed to me then, and it does now on reviewing 
them, that his familiar talk was the best revelation of his 
genius of all the ways by which the inward man was 
outwardly expressed. The plane of thought in which his 
mind habitually moved, even when off duty and in repose ; 
the energy of its action and the richness of his intellectual 
resources were there seen, stripped of the glare of rhetoric 
and the enchantments of distance and parade which might 
be supposed to magnify his public efforts ; and I soon be- 
came satisfied that it might be said of him in every field 
of thouglit, as many of his professional eulogists have 
said of his strictly legal attainments, that he was as 
solid as he was showy. Strip him of his rhetorical plu- 
mage, quench that unearthly flame of those deep eyes 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 21 

beaming on a jury, calm those torrid heats of passion 
which swejit his audience along in ardent sympathy with 
his si)arkling sentences, — and still, the great thoughts, the 
historical truths, the wise generalizations, the just judg- 
ments on men and things, the intellectual grasp, all were 
only more clearly manifest in the still clear light of quiet 
conversation. 

Had he not been brilliant, he would have led the bar 
by mere law-learning and law-logic, and then no one would 
ever have questioned the tough texture of his brain ; and 
so he who shall read these pages of his familiar talks — 
when his mind was not up and on duty — will see, in the 
themes among which he habitually moved, and the intel- 
lectual alacrity with which he grasped at every topic sug- 
gested, and poured out instantly new and glowing thoughts 
about it, the substantial and essential powers of his head. 
He could talk on any thing, and talk originally and wisely. 
I think he often talked more wisely even than he spoke. 

His more pleasurable intellectual exertions revolved 
back among the ancient ages, but he was always booked 
up on all the fresh topics and lines of modern thinking. 
His table in his library was covered six deep with the 
newest issues of the press ; and within reach of the sofa 
upon which he habitually lounged or reclined, were several 
movable stands packed and piled with books ; which he 
could draw directly up to him into more intimate contact 
than the formal rows of innumerable volumes, which lined 
the walls and rose rank upon rank from floor to ceiling all 
round the spacious chamber. Surrounded by these mute 
friends, he loved to be and to talk. 



22 KEMINISCENCES OF KQFUS CHOATE. 



HIS CONVERSATION. 

Let wlioever would talk with him, he would meet him 
on his own topic. With me, as he would with any young 
man of a taste that way, he talked chiefly of lawyers and 
public men, their eloquence, their advocacy, their charac- 
ter ; great historical subjects, political retrospections and 
prophecies ; the study of the law, its best method ; oratory, 
and the best way to cultivate a genuine eloquence ; the 
great jury trials with which he had been directly or indi- 
rectly connected, and many other kindred themes. Take 
him sick or well, lying down or standing up, the flow of 
his thinight seemed always as clear, exact and ready at one 
time as at another. 

These conversations have seemed to me Avorth printing 
for the benefit of other young men. They contain a great 
deal that is directly practical. They contain the teachings 
of the greatest of American advocates upon many of the 
secrets of his singular art. They express his thinking also 
upon many subjects of absorbing interest to all students 
of law, of politics, or of intellectual development gener- 
ally. 

It has been said by a high authority, of the first Napo- 
leon, that the talks of St. Helena revealed his fiber and 
volume of brain as surely as the fights of Austerlitz and 
Lodi. " Let me talk with a man," said Dr. Johnson, " and 
I '11 find out in fifteen minutes how much of a man he is." 
No person of intelligence could talk with Kufus Choate at 
any time on any theme without coming away more im- 
pressed with his absolute power, the long range and the 
steady grasp of his mind, than he had been by all his daz- 
zling outside public performances. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 23 

The bar of Essex county, where he first practiced, 
are eloquent to tliis day whenever their thoughts turn 
to Choate's conversation ; and I have known kidies at 
a dinner party, who expected only dry thoughts from so 
great a man with a face so wrinkled and so grave, siu-- 
priscd to find themselves enchained by his original and 
striking talk, presented with a manner of such unpretend- 
ing hut assured power. And in the capital of the Union, 
at Wash in ton, I have heard celeb; ated men say that no 
talk was ever uttered even in that metropolitan center of 
every sort of intelligence, at all equal to that which was 
heard when Choate and Webster got their legs opposite 
each other under some friendly host's mahogany. The 
sparkle and flash produced by such a battle of brains as 
that, however, can not be preserved. The most that wo 
can keep memory of is the character of his thoughts, the 
quality and readiness of his information, and something 
of the style, whether dashing or demure, in wliich they 
were presented. No man can paint battles to the life ; but 
we can always review the regiments, inspect the arms and 
ammunition, and infer the deadly range of the rifled 
ordnance. 

Mr. Choate's conversation was grave, rich and stately ; 
yet always there was a play of humor glimmering through 
its thoughts de'lighting and dazzling by turns. You never 
heard him sav much, however grave, without catching 
something thrown in at once startling and sparkling, or 
strange and mirthful. I do not tliink I ever saw him, even 
in his own house, where of course there was no disposition 
to do any thing for effect, either in his library or at his 
table, fatigued or fresh, without hearing him say some- 
thing in that quiet and sometimes sepulchral tone of his 
which could hardly fail to set a smile on the grimmest 



24 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

features. It was not done for effect, but the natural play 
of a great but truly frolicsome mind. The dry, quaint 
and fearfully sober manner, too, in which he would utter 
these things intensified their effect very much. As fre- 
quently in court he would throw off a scintillation, which 
when repeated would seem not very humorous perhaps, 
but which by his portentously solemn visage and manner 
would set the jury, the Bench and the audience into con- 
vulsions of laughter. 

Perhaps, too, the contrast between the generally ele- 
vated character of his diction and thoughts, and the com- 
ical or humorous, added to the impressiveness both of his 
gravity and his humor. 

His words in talk were the same rare and hish-soundino; 
words which he used in his speaking. I do not believe any 
man in America, if even in the world since Adam, had 
such a remarkable vocabulary of language as he had. It 
was the language of learning, of literature/ of romance, of 
art, of newspapers, of slang even, all mixed up together. 
But chiefly, I think, he delighted in long words — " long- 
tailed words in osity and ation." I asked him once how 
he supposed that plain jury before him of farmers and 
workmen were going to understand that deluge of dic- 
tionaries with which for three hours he had overwhelmed 
them. " Well," said he, laughing, " they know which 
side I'm on, and they know I spoke a great while, and 
that's enough for them to know about it." He did 
not accord at all in Mr. Webster's veneration for the 
Saxon element of our language, — the words short, simple 
and strong. He rather agreed with Thomas de Quincey, 
that the Latin element of the tongue is needed, to bear in 
upon the mind an impression of general power, of beauty, 
and of sensibility. Wlien he chose, or the exigency de- 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS €HOATE, 25 

manded, he could salt down a thought into the smallest 
and snuggest sentences, — but he did not generally choose. 

But though his thought and talk were all bookish*and 
smelt of the lamp, yet they were as racy with the elements 
of every-day life as they were flavored with the essence of all 
good literatures. The truth was, he lived two lives : one 
alone with his library, the other active in courts ; the one 
led him in silence through the memorable thoughts and 
splendid epitaphs of the dead ; the other in noise and confu- 
sion through the jealous hearts and squabbling tongues and 
tedious narratives of the living. By both he educated 
himself ; and, theoretically, he knew men as well as books. 
I think he was profoundly acquainted with human nature, 
under ordinary aspects. He knew the sjirings of men's 
actions, and, so to speak, the secret history of their words ; 
and often in examining a witness, he would, as it were, 
quietly talk with him familiarly and friendly, and finally 
dismiss him from the stand fully satisfied with himself, all 
unconscious that the astute lawyer had divined his inmost 
secret, had drawn out from him enough to show it, and 
when the hour for the jury came, would honeycomb and 
riddle his evidence. Yet he never did this unless the 
necessity of the case demanded it. He treated all wit- 
nesses well. He was too great to bully ; and whatever was 
the witness's weakness or sin, Choate never harmed him 
unless compelled to do so. But if it became necessary, if 
the witness lay athwart his verdict, then he was crushed 
down and crushed up and marched over. 

Besides the conversations alluded to, this volume is 
designed to exhibit reminiscences of Mr. Choate's forensic 
and public life for the last fifteen years ; to allude to the 
great occasions upon which he appeared, their circum- 
stances, and, in some cases, his own personal remarks to 



26 REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 

the author upon them ; to mention sahent and sparkling 
passages in his arguments and speeches, interlocutory dis- 
cussions of evidence, and points in the trial of cases — pas- 
sages noted down at the time, many of which are not else- 
where preserved or if preserved, are so only in speeches 
reported hastily, and therefore imperfectly, for the daily 
press. Many of his speeches, however, have been deliber- 
ately reported and revised, and all such will be, it is hoped, 
carefully preserved in the volumes of his Works published 
by his family. In some instances, to illustrate a thought 
descriptive of him, single passages taken from his well- 
accredited reports will be presented, but his Speeches as 
speeches, must be looked for elsewhere. 

After all, however, that those who knew and loved Mr, 
Choate can do, he will be forever unknown to those who 
never saw and heard him. There have been greater men, 
and speakers more spontaneously charming ; but there 
never has been, nor will there be, a second Rufus Choate. 
He can have no parallel, he had no rival, he has no suc- 
cessor. The scepter of his forensic empire sinks with him 
into his grave. But many men of his own and the younger 
generation, especially the latter, will long love to dwell 
upon his genius, to recall his marvelous feats of eloquence, 
to appreciate the masterly grasp of his vigorous intellect, 
to remember his fraternal words of encouragement to them, 
his rich and cordial smile, those antagonisms in which no 
malice mingled, those victorious verdicts which no insolence 
of triumph barbed to the defeated, and all those matchless 
qualities which made his brethren of the bar feel prouder 
that they belonged to a profession of which he was a mem- 
ber. 

At the meeting of his brethren of the Boston bar, before 
referred to, held when they learned that the dead body of 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 27 

their great leader was on its way to them from Halifex, 
every speaker, especially the senior gentlemen who had 
been his frequent antagonists, alluded particularly to his 
unfailing urbanity and his unruffled temper. In a pro- 
fession of forensic fighting, he was always himself at i^eace. 
And his associates particularly remembered and recounted 
that he was not only unruffled in action, but in the man- 
agement of his cause he was always magnanimous and in- 
dulgent to his adversary. Whatever formal concessions he 
could make to that adversary which would save liim trou- 
ble, — as of procuring extra witnesses, of guarding against 
surprise, and such things, — this monarch of the bar would 
accord with a princely liberality. But the miracle about 
his character was, that with a temperament whose excita- 
bleness was daily cultivated on principle to support his 
eloquence, his self-command was as supreme as his passion 
was stormy. Though everybody else might be in a passion, 
and he had made them so, he was to be seen as serene as if 
he had just risen from the breakftxst-table ; though every- 
body else was galling, ugly and ill-natured, his words were 
as composing and honeyed as the utterances of a lady's 
boudoir. 

In court or out of court, a romantic interest always 
seemed to invest him. With his disheveled locks waving 
about his head ; his gloomy countenance in which grief and 
glory contended — the signature of soitows and the con- 
sciousness of acknowledged power — the oriental complex- 
ion speaking of an Asiatic type of man ; his darkly burn- 
ing eyes ; his walk swaying along in that singular gait 
which made his broad square shoulders careen from side to 
side, like the opposite bulwarks of a ship ; his moody 
loneliness, for when oif duty he was rarely seen other than 
alone ; his self-absorption of thought producing a sort of 



28 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

impression as of a mysterious silence around him — lie 
moved about more like a straggler from another civiliza- 
tion than a Yankee lawyer of New England growth and 
stature. 

In his manhood as in his youth, everybody loved this 
romantic man. It may be said without extravagance that 
in his own section of the country he was the ornament and 
dear delight of his generation. Men even who utterly con- 
demned his politics and disliked many things in his career, 
still spoke kindly and fondly of " Rufus," as the elders 
called him — of " Choate" as everybody else loved to call 
him. Of those that knew him I do not think ho had a 
single enemy ; and of those that did not know him, he had 
very few, except of such as hate mankind. When he died 
the sunlight foded from the forum; and thenceforth the 
atmosphere of the courts became the cold, prosaic air of 
daily business details. 

His loss takes from the profession its most stimulating 
example, its most splendid and charming illustration. For 
a season certainly, if not for ever in our practical age — ^his 
death eclipses the gayety of the Courts, and the luster of the 
judgment-seat vanishes away. 



CHAPTER II. 

OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE, AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

RuFus Choate was born in Ipswich, Mass., on the 1st 
October, in the year 1799, and died in July, 1859, in the 
sixtieth year, therefore, of his age. He is known to the 
world outside of his profession of the law, chiefly by his 
speeches in the United States Senate, and his Addresses to 
the people on political and literary subjects from the caucus 
and lyceum Platforms. But though his speeches in Con- 
gress charmed and conquered the universal ear, and his 
platform harangues led the feelings of great audiences as 
moons lead tides, yet his true fame must rest on his 
professional career as a legal .advocate. To be — The great 
advocate, he gave the thinking and the enthusiasm of his 
life ; in that career he had garnered up his heart, and on 
tliat he rested his reputation. Whatever else he did was 
incidental and comparatively accidental. Had he not been 
sought out and urged to other fields of public service, it is 
not probable he would ever have wandered outside of the 
courts ; and when he did do so, he came back again soon 
and joyfully, as if he had returned home. 

I do not propose to write a full memoir of him ; but the 
prominent dates of his career, and a descriptive outline of 
him as a lawyer and a man, may appropriately introduce 
these reminiscences. 

He grew up in Essex county, in Massachusetts, with but 
ordinary ojiportunities of schooling. AVhen he was sixteen 



30 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

years old he entered Dartmouth College, but a brilliant boy- 
hood had already made him sufficiently known to excite in 
many quarters of old Essex great expectation of his future 
achievements. His college course increased these expecta- 
tions. In Hanover, they said there never was any such boy 
in college as young Kufus Choate. In studies he was im- 
measurably and easily the head of his class ; and one of his 
tutors has since said that long before he left college he was 
qualified to be a professor in any university in America. 
He indulged very moderately in sports or play. When the 
boys were kicking foot-ball, he would stand or sit gazing 
or soliloquizing under the big tree. He preferred lonely 
walks and his beloved books. Often, he has since told me, 
he used to sit with his books reading and ruminating till 
long after midnight and far into the morning. But, nev- 
ertheless, he was not pedantic or conceited toward his 
companions ; on the contrary, they all loved him dearly. 
Nobody envied him ; almost everybody idolized him. 

Of course, he graduated with the first honors. His 
delivery of the valedictory address is still remembered by 
many as very beautiful, touching and eloquent. His ap- 
pearance on the stage, so singular for a youth — that face, 
even then, pensive and poetical with the pale cast of 
thought, the shadow of the midnight lamp even then stain- 
ing the cheek ; the mournful and pathetic tones of his 
naturally soft voice ; and the original, elaborate and attrac- 
tive ideas he presented, all consjjired to weave the spell 
upon his hearers, and, with all his comrades, to crown him 
in memory for ever as the hero of their hearts. 

After graduating, he taught school, but soon adopted 
the law as his profession, and fell upon the study of it with 
the most eager application, as if with prophetic instinct of 
the destined identification of his renown with it. He en- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 31 

tcrcd the Dane Law School for a few months. By this 
time, very many eyes had be^iin to turn to him with a 
fond interest ; and he now left his Essex home to prosecute 
his studies in Washington, in the office of the Attorney 
General of the United States, William Wirt, towards whom, 
in conjunction with William Pinkney, the attention of the 
professional mind of the country was then concentrating 
as the two foremost figures on the American forum. He 
remained in his office a year, but, as he told me, he did 
not see much of Wirt himself ; for the Attorney General 
was prostrated a good deal of the time by a difficulty in liis 
head, arising from the exhaustion of his official labor. He, 
however, had the good fortune to hear the last gi-eat argu- 
ment of Pinkney and one of the first great arguments of 
Webster. He saw Pinkney fall back fainting in the midst 
of that argument, and watched him as li(3 was carried out 
to return to a court room no more, but to die, as he had 
prayed he might die, the unquestioned leader of the Ameri- 
can Bar. The intimate sight of these giants of the forum 
stinuilated his aspirations and invigorated his energies. 
Pinkney, especially, excited his rapturous admiration. 
Often, since then, he has referred, in conversation with me, 
to his si)lendid stream of words and arguments, the rapid 
torrent of his overwhelming enthusiasm, the grasp of his 
mind, and the glorious arrogance with which he carried all 
before him. Webster, on the contrary, he said, seemed, as 
he followed Pinkney, infinitely tame, jejune and dry. Prob- 
ably from this hour dated his critical study of Pinkney 's ar- 
gumsnts and speeches. For these, he knew thoroughly. He 
traced their gradual improvement from the first essays to 
the last crowning efi'orts of his life ; and he was always 
warm, in pointing out how successively they grew richer 
and stronger in diction, in form of phrase, and in scope and 



32 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

sweep of thought. " If you want to see," he used to say, 
" what an immeasurable difference there may be between 
different productions of the same. mind, — read Pinkney's 
earliest and his latest arguments." 

From these southern fields of ^professional observation, 
he came back to enter the office of Judge Cummins, of 
Salem ; and in September, 1823, he was admitted to the 
bar of the Common Pleas of that county, and opened his 
office in the town of Danvers, near by. In two or tln-ee 
years he removed to Salem, the shire town of the county, 
and in November, 1825, he was admitted to the bar of the 
Suj)reme Judicial Court. 

He did not undergo any probation of patient waiting for 
clients, for his success was almost instantaneous. As his 
boyhood had been brilliant, his manhood was meteoric. He 
took hold of celebrity as if it were his right, at once. And 
very speedily he filled such a place in the public eye that 
he even began to be followed round from court to court by 
people interested to hear him. He now applied himself so 
absolutely to law that he utterly neglected literature. I 
have heard him say that his mind liecame entirely arid and 
desolate, so exclusively did he study dry law. But, never- 
theless, all agree that no New England court of justice had 
ever before seen such charming fervor thrown into its dull 
discussions, or heard the ancient decisions of Saxon law set 
forth with the grace of such Grecian rhetoric. And all now 
agree, also, that his mastery of naked law and the athletic 
action of his understanding are the qualities which any one 
must admit, who endeavors to account for the success of his 
apparent audacity in grappling at once with the most form- 
idable and experienced leaders of the local bar. 

From the very first, however, in the management of his 
cases he went for victory. Ambitious of reputation, he still 



KEMINISCENCES OF BUT US CHOATE. 33 

looked with a single eye to getting the verdict. And he 
would sacrifice his rhetoric and his preparation at any time 
to make any headway towards that goal. Within a few 
years he has said that at first in his practice, although he 
knew the law of a case, yet lie would he careless ahout 
presenting it in a manner to gain the admiration of the 
judge, provided he could thereby gain the approbation 
of the jury. And even if he knew his law was so bad 
that his verdict when gained would probably not stand, 
still he always struck for that verdict nevertheless. Na- 
poleon, he said, used to conquer first, and negotiate after- 
wards ; and on somewhat the same principle, I think, he 
would win his case first, and fight through the law with 
the judges in the best way he could after the jury were 
dismissed. 

But it was all done from high sjjrings of ambition. The 
sense of power and the love of glory, not at all the glitter 
of gold, moved his clear spirit. He never seemed to me to 
have any sense of the meaning or value of money. Until 
very late in life, when he took his son-in-law into partncr- 
shi}) with him, he never collected or even knew what was 
due to him, except under a spasmodic impulse of neces- 
sitv. 

In 1825 he was elected a representative to the Massachu- 
setts Legislature, and in 1827 he was a member of the State 
Senate. In 1832 he was chosen to represent the Essex 
district in Congress, but declined a reelection. In these 
occasional forays into politics he distinguished himself by 
set speeches, florid, erudite, and fervid. Such were his ex- 
haustless literary resources that he touched nothing which 
he did not adorn. He had neither time nor inclination for 
the political drudgery, and, therefore, did little of the de- 
tail business of politics in the committee rooms or on the 



o* 



34 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

floor. To the drudgery of law only, would he consent to 
buckle down his fiery and impatient genius. 



HIS EARLY PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 

Several of Mr. Choate's early friends, classmates, towns- 
men, or acquaintances have put on record their recollec- 
tions of the way he struck their world during these first 
years. No outline of his life would be at all satisfactory 
which did not give at least some idea of a dawning so 
resiilendent. I have therefore collected from all the 
accounts the following sketch of his college career and 
his Essex county life : 

" Mr. Choate was so far a wonderful man that full justice 
is not yet done to his amazing attributes of mind. From 
boyhood he was a marvel and a j)i'odigy. When at the 
academy, the reputation of his brilliant scholarship jire- 
ceded him to college. The writer of this sketch has often 
heard his father, who was a classmate of Mr. Choate in 
college, speak of his already wonderful scholarship, that 
placed him head and shoulders above all his companions, 
though the accurate and learned George P. Marsh, of Ver- 
mont, late American minister to Constantinople, was one 
of them. No one thought of disputing his supremacy, for 
he wsis facile princeps. His passion for the acquisition of 
knowledge was unconquerable. He came to the recitation 
room haggard and w^orn, with throbbing temples and ex- 
hausted frame ; but everybody knew he had outwatched 
the Bear, and was pursuing the beauties of Greek and 
Latin literature far beyond the tlien narrow curriculum 
of college studies. The classmates recall with delight the 
elegant felicity of his translations, that made the heavy 
task a dream of poetry. When, as the valedictorian of 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 35 

his class, he hade them farewell with mournful pathos, 
many an eye in the old church was wet with sympathy 
for him whose youthful promise seemed likely to he 
quenched at its early dawning. Yet he lived to be for 
more than a generation the favorite and cherished son of 
his Alma Mater. And he loved her with an unfailing affec- 
tion. Beneath the venerable walls of Dartmouth he mar- 
ried the wife of his youth. Thither he loved to return ; 
there more than once, in the old church where he had won 
his earliest triumph, he electrified cultivated and delighted 
audiences with the long-drawn strains of his matchless 
eloquence." 

The foregoing is from an account written by a gentle- 
man in Wisconsin. The following is by a gentleman of 
Salem, and was written in 1858 : 

" Mr. Choate was admitted an attorney of the Court 
of Common Pleas, in this county, at the September term, 
1823, having completed his professional studies in the 
office of the late Judge Cummins, then of Salem, and one 
of the leaders of the Essex bar. At the November term 
of the Supreme Judicial Court in this county, in 1825, he 
was admitted an attorney of that court. At that period, 
the bar of this county was adorned and illustrated by able 
and learned lawyers — ^by men of large experience and high 
character, who have filled with honor and distinction hiffh 
official positions in the county and State. It is doing no 
injustice to any of those eminent men and lawyers to say, 
that Mr, Choate, upon his first introduction to the practice, 
placed himself at once in the very front rank of the profes- 
sion. All felt and acknowledged, that if not a Daniel had 
come to judgment, one very much like him had come. He 
was retained at once in important causes, and was imme- 
diately one of the leaders of the Essex bar. He monopo- 



36 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

lized the practice on the criminal side of the courts, first 
in the Court of Common Pleas, and afterwards in the Su- 
preme Court, on his admission to full practice at the bar. 
At that period the criminal jurisdiction was in both courts, 
the higher offenses being cognizable only in the Supreme 
Court. Mr. Choate used to be regarded as the Attorney- 
General for all the criminals arraigned in those courts, 

" The first appearance of Mr. Choate in any professional 
capacity in Salem that I can now recollect, and that must 
have been within a few months after his admission to the 
bar, was in the defense of some young men of respectable 
femilies in his own town, Danvers, who were arraigned 
before the late Ezekiel Savage, Esq., the principal police 
magistrate of Salem at that time, on the charge of some 
riotous proceedings at a colored dance-house, in a small 
colony of blacks, then settled and for years before and 
afterwards at the head of the Salem and Boston turnpike. 
The case excited much interest, from the character and 
position of some of the parties implicated, and especially 
from the fame, even then, the expectations and hopes of 
the young advocate. All had heard of Mr. Choate. He 
had before that time, I believe, appeared once or twice be- 
fore some of the magistrates of Danvers, and for a retainer 
of three or five dollars poured out, in the fullest measure, 
all the affluence of his varied knowledge, all his high 
and bold logic, his wanxls of fire — always telling, always 
pointed, and always bearing in some way on his case, and 
literally astonished the natives and all other men who 
heard him. His fame at once sj^read abroad. There is 
and was a close intercourse, business and otherwise, be- 
tween Salem and South Danvers, where Mr. Choate first 
commenced his practice, and then resided. They, the men 
of Danvers, had never heard such eloquence before ; it 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 37 

came upon them with all the force of a new revelation. It 
was wholly a new sort of thunder and lightning, and they 
were literally filled with amazement ! Under these cir- 
cumstances, it is not strange that when the ' Mumford 
case/ as it was called, came up in Salem — a somewhat 
larger and broader theater — a more diversified audience — 
ship masters, old salts, supercargoes, clerks, merchants, and 
the various men of the various callings of the chief town 
of the county — an interest and a feeling altogether un- 
usual should have been excited on the occasion. It was 
so. The place where Justice Savage held his court was a 
large room on the second floor of a substantial building, on 
one of our principal streets, and it was immediately densely 
packed with all the varieties of our population to some ex- 
tent, but the audience at first wijs mostly composed of those 
persons who usually congregate in such places. The trial 
commenced and proceeded ; witness after witness w^as called, 
and all subjected to the severest and most rigid cross-exam- 
ination by the young counsel. Now and then a passage at 
arms with the counsel for the government (a gentleman of 
very considerable experience in criminal courts, and of some 
fifteen or twenty years' standing at the bar), would come 
up, to give variety to the scene ; and now and then a gen- 
tle, most gracious and reverential renconter with the hon- 
orable court would intervene (Mr. Choate was always most 
respectful and deferential to the courts), and again a hard 
contest with some perverse and obstinate witness would re- 
lieve the tedium of the protracted examination. Some of 
the immediate auditors would get over-heated, and then 
work themselves out into the fresh air, and report the pro- 
ceeding, the sayings and doings of the young lawyer — what 
he said to his antagonist. Esquire T., or to the honorable 
court, or this or that fugitive comment on the witness, or 



38 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

case — as the trial proceeded (an inveterate habit of Mr. 
Choate, in all his early practice, and no court or counsel 
were or could be quick enough to prevent it — it would 
breathe out, this or that comment, or word, or sugges- 
tion). 

" In this way, and by such means, the fame of this case 
extended, while the trial was in progress, some two or three 
days, as I now recollect, in the office of a police justice ! 
Men of the various classes would assemble around the 
court room, in the entry, on the stairs, outside, to hear 
the fresh rejiorts ; and so things continued till the argu- 
ment came, and then there was a rush for every available 
point and spot, within or without the compass of the 
speaker's voice, and the people literally hung with de- 
lighted and absorbed attention on his li^JS. It was a new 
revelation again to this audience. They had heard able 
and eloquent men before in courts of justice and elsewhere. 
Essex had had, for years and generations, an able, learned 
and eloquent bar — there had been many giants abroad in 
the midst of us — some of national fame and standing, but 
no such giant as this had appeared before — such words, such 
epithets, such involutions, such close and j^owerful logic all 
the while, such grace and dignity, such profusion and waste 
even of every thing beautiful and lovely ! No, not waste, 
he never wasted a word. How he dignified that court, how 
he elevated its high functions, with what deference did he 
presume to say a word, under the protection, and, as he 
hoped, with the ajjproving sanction of that high tribunal 
of justice, in behalf of his unfortunate (infelicitous, from 
the circumstances in which they were placed) clients, etc., 
etc. I could give no word or sentence of this sj)ecch. I 
did not even hear it, but I heard much of it, and all ac- 
counts agreed in representing it as an extraordinary and 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 39 

wholly matcliless performance. Thej had never heard the 
like before, or any thing even approaching it, for manner, 
matter and substance. It was a new school of rhetoric, 
oratory and logic, and of all manner of diverse forces, 
working hoAvever steadily and irresistibly in one direction 
to accomplish the speaker's purpose or object. 

"The feeling excited by this first speech of Mr. Choate 
in Salem was one of great admiration and delight. All felt 
lifted up by his themes, and there is one thing remarkable 
about Mr. Choate always. He elevates his hearer to his 
subject. His subject is always above or higher than his 
audience. Now of this particular case. It was a common 
row of some common and some rather uncommon rowdies 
at a negro dance-house. That was the subject of a three 
hours' speech, to which a common man, as well as a man 
of the highest culture, would have listened, not only with- 
out weariness, but with delight. A great audience, of all 
classes and conditions, did listen to it with delight and ad- 
miration, and all agreed with one voice that they never had 
heard the like before. This single effort established Mr. 
Choate's reputation in Salem from that day to this. And 
all were prepared to welcome him, when, a few years after- 
wards, he took up his abode here, after the elevation of his 
old friend and teacher. Judge Cummins, to the bench of 
the Court of Common Pleas. 

" Mr. Choate at once went into a full practice. I should 
think within two years from the date of his admission to 
the bar, he was retained in more causes in the Common 
Pleas than any other attorney of that court. He had all 
the criminal defenses, and if he did not clear all the rogues, 
none were convicted, under his surgery. While he re- 
mained in the county, no jury ever brought in a verdict of 
guilty against any client defended by him ! And I remem- 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 



ber hearing Mr. Choate say, not long before he left our 
bar, that no person defended by him here had then been 
convicted. In the case particularly referred to, some of the 
jjarties were held for trial in the Court of Common Pleas, 
where he again defended them, and they were acquitted. 
There was one famous case in the Court of Common Pleas, 
of an indictment of one of his then townsmen for stealing 
a flock of turkeys ! We had this case, at every term of 
the court, for a year or more, and the inquiry used to be, 
' When are the turkeys coming on ?' The proofs ac- 
cumulated on the part of the government at each succes- 
sive trial. The county attorney, a man of experience and 
ability, fortified himself on every point, and piled proof 
upon proof at each successive trial, but all without success. 
The voice of the charmer was too powerful for his proofs, 
and at each trial — three or four in all, I forget which — 
there was one dissenting juror ! The case at last became 
famous in the county, and in the vacations of the court tlie 
inquiry was often heard, ' When is the turkey-case coming 
on again ?' and people would come from different parts of 
the county on purpose to hear that trial. Here the theater 
was still larger. It was the county, the native county, of 
the already distinguished advocate. I heard those trials. 
One was in old Ipswich — in December, I think — a leisure 
season — within four miles of the spot where the orator was 
born. They came up from Essex — old Chebacco — the old 
and the young men of the town. Kepresentatives, more or 
less, from the whole body of the county were present, and 
the court house was crowded with delis-hted and aston- 
ished listeners. I remember how they all hung upon him, 
spell-bound by his eloquence ; and I verily believe these 
by-standers would have acquitted by a majority vote ; but 
the jury, bound by their oaths to return a true verdict ac- 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 41 

cording to the e\adence, would not do so, but still there 
was one dissenting juror ; and finally the prosecuting offi- 
cer, in utter despair, after the third or fourth trial, entered 
a nolle prosequi, and thus the turkeys were turned or 
driven out of court. 

"I have heard that this alleged turkey-thief, years after- 
wards, called on Mr. Choate at his office in Boston. Mr. 
Choate did not recollect liini, which greatly surprised the 
old client, and he said, ' Why, Mr. Choate, I am the man 
you plead so for in the turkey-case, when they couldn't find 
any thing agin me.' There had been only forty-four good 
and true men against him, if there were four trials, and I 
believe there were, without including twenty-three more of 
the grand jury ! 

" After Mr. Choate's admission to full practice in the 
Supreme Judicial Court, I recollect one term of the court 
he procured the actual acquittal of nearly the whole dock — 
of all, certainly, whom he defended. That was the week 
before Thanksgiving, and, it was said, they were all going 
home to spend Thanksgiving, instead of to the jails and pen- 
itentiaries. The old and venerable Attorney General said, 
pleasantly, at one of these trials, (it was in the old Salem 
court house,) he believed the days of ' the Salem witch- 
craft had returned a^ain.' He called him ' the conjuror.' 
I repeat what I believe to be the literal fact, that no man 
defended by Mr. Choate in the Court of Common Pleas, or 
in the Supreme Judicial Court, while he practiced in this 
county, was ever convicted by a verdict of the jury ! And 
he was the criminal Attorney General from the first to the 
last of his being here. 

" Mr. Choate, while practicing the law in his native 
county, had a truly noble name and fame, and it was all 
justly deserved. ISlo man was ever truer to his clients 



42 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

than he was. He always exerted himself to the utmost in 
every case, and that has been one secret of his great suc- 
cess. It made no difference with him what was the cause 
— what the tribunal, the party, or the fee, he went into it 
with his whole strength, and summoned to his aid all his 
vast resources of logic, wit, utterance, learning, and knowl- 
edge of men, (in which no man excels him,) and contended 
for his very life for mastery and success. 

" I have heard him in the State courts, in the United 
States Supreme Court, arguing a question of boundary 
between States, or discussing the constitutionality of a law 
of Massachusetts ; I have heard him, also, in the Legisla- 
ture of Massachusetts, in the convention of the State, in 
the lyceum, on the stump, and in the Senate of the United 
States, and must say that I heard him sometimes, while ho 
was practicing law in Danvers, in the early years of his 
professional life, in an argument before a country justice of 
the peace for his tribunal, and a small neighborhood of 
farmers and mechanics for his audience, with a poor man 
for his client, wholly unable to pay a fee, in presenti or 
in futuro, when, to my mind and recollection, he fully 
equaled any of his later efforts on larger topics or of wider 
fame. The fact is, Mr. Choate was a full-grown lawyer, 
jurist, advocate, and, more than all, man at the start. He 
had sounded the very depths of the law in his early studies ; 
he always read with pen in hand, and noted and inwardly 
digested every thing. He read every thing, understood 
every thing, and remembered every thing. His mind was 
filled with all knowledge. His aims and ambition were 
wholly professional, and with such a training, such capaci- 
ties, and such knowledge of the law and of all other sub- 
iccts, his advent to the bar was, indeed, the inauguration 
of a new school ; but it is a school that will die with him ! 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 43 

He may have imitators, but lie will never have an equal or 
a successor in liis sj^he^x. With all his remarkable exu- 
berance and ricliness of diction, he never uttered a word to 
the ear, in his spoken addresses, which had not a meaning 
and power on the topic in hand. He makes all manner 
and forms of speech his servitors to do his bidding, and to 
work to his ends, whatever they may be, 

" Mr. Choate was always a great favorite with the mem- 
bers of the bar here, especially the younger members. He 
was welcomed with a manly and just pride by liis seniors and 
the old leaders of the bar. In his general manner and bear- 
ing, he was always respectful and deferential to his seniors in 
years, and especially so to the courts — to all courts — to the 
layman justice of the peace in the country, as well as to the 
Supreme Court in full session. I need not say that he was 
always an established favorite witli the people at large, 
and while he resided among us, they always delighted in 
showing him marks of their confidence and regard. He 
was early elected to the Legislature from Danvers, after- 
wards to the Senate from the county, and, a few years 
later, to Congress from the old Essex south district. 

" He was then just about thirty years old. We all re- 
joiced in his honors, he bore them so meekly and unobtru- 
sively. He never sought office ; office always sought him. 
When nominated for Congress, it was with the greatest 
difficulty that he could be prevailed upon to accept the 
nomination. He had no taste for public and political life. 
All his heart, all his aims in life were in his profession ; 
and he yielded to what seemed to be, at the particular 
juncture, a necessity. I need not say that when we finally 
parted with him, to enter upon the broader and larger field 
of the metropolis, and to earn for himself, in various pub- 
lic stations and employments since, a national reputation 



44 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

and fame, as the unequaled orator and advocate of the 
Massachusetts bar, we, the bar and the people of Essex, 
did it with extreme regret. Very j^leasant was he to all 
while amongst us, and we all rejoice in his successes and 
honors, and will pardon much to a high sentiment of ' na- 
tionality.' He argued questions of law in the Supreme 
Judicial Court, as soon as- he was permitted to do so by 
the then rules and practice in that court, and that was at 
the November term, 1827. I think one of his first cases 
was Jones vs. Andover, reported in the sixth Pickering, 
which raised a question of construction as to the meaning 
and import of the term ' highway,' as used in the statute, 
giving individuals, injured by any defects therein, a remedy 
against the town bound to maintain such highway. In 
this particular case, Mr. Choate appeared for the defend- 
ant town, and at the trial a non-suit, by consent, was en- 
tered, on the ground that the way in question was a toivn 
way. And that was the question for the whole court, 
whether the word ' highways,' as used in the statute, in- 
cluded ' town' ways ; if not, the plaintiff in the suit had 
no remedy. The court decided that it did, against Mr. 
Choate ; and I rather think he will tell you, this day, that 
that decision was another form of legislation. From the 
manner in which he argued the question, I have no doubt 
he believes he was right to this day, and perhaps many of 
the profession would agree with him. Tlie enlarged con- 
struction would make a better and more reasonable law, 
undoubtedly ; but I have heard other gentlemen beside Mr. 
Choate pronounce that decision mere legislation. Another 
case, argued by him at the same or a subsequent term, 
relative to a reservation in a deed and a right of way, 
(Choate vs. Burnham,) opened wider topics and larger 
scope ; and I well recollect with what marked attention he 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 45 

was listened to by the court and bar. The court then con- 
sisted of Parker, C. J., and Justices Putnam, Wilde and 
Morton. They evidently looked upon him as a sort of neio 
creation." 

Another Salem friend says : " From the first Mr. 
Choate was industrious and studious, rising early in tlie 
morning, and busied with his books at his office long before 
the day laborers went to their work. He was accustomed to 
take long walks, frequently in the pastures, and without 
a companion. In these lonely rambles his full and melo- 
dious voice was sometimes heard by other strollers in those 
solitudes, themselves unseen, who were thus unexpectedly 
made auditors of the young forensic speaker. Doubtless, 
the partridges and squirrels of this lonely region (the sheep 
pasture rocks) have often been startled by the tones of that 
voice which was wasting ' its sweetness on the desert air,' 
and which was thus preparing to sway listening senates, 
and charm the ears of his countrymen. 

" Mr. Choate was a regular, though not a constant, at- 
tendant at church. At first, and until about tlie time of 
his marriage, he attended at the Unitarian church, then 
under the pastoral care of Eev. Mr. Sewall. He afterward 
went to the Congregational church under the pastorate 
of Kev. Mr. Walker, and subsequently Rev. Mr. Cowles. 
The same restlessness of manner, or nervousness, which was 
so marked in Mr. Choate, was even gi-eater in his youth 
than in his later years. Everywhere, at home, abroad in 
the court room, or at the church, but mostly when in deep 
thought, he was accustomed to run his slender white fin- 
gers through his long jetty hair, and toss about in wild 
confusion his curly locks, which, however, always fell into 
comely order when his hand was withdrawn. 

" His love of books is well known, and was as strong in 



46 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

his younger days as at a later period, although his collec- 
tion was not then large. Like many other young profes- 
sional men, his means did not allow him to purchase 
largely, as he was already in debt for his education and his 
small but well-selected law library. More recently he has 
been a large purchaser of choice authors ; and at auction 
sales of foreign books he has been accustomed to give orders 
for the purchase of such as he found on the catalogues. On 
an occasion he gave particular orders to his bookseller to 
buy certain books which he had marked on the catalogue 
of foreign books. Some were limited to five, ten, fifteen, or 
twenty dollars, as the case might be ; but there was one 
book that he must have. ' Buy that book at any price,' 
said he with emphasis. The result was that he obtained 
the coveted volume for the magnificent sum of twelve 
cents ! 

"We might have spoken of many traits of his character 
as yet untouched. Of his early friendship, his fascinating 
converse, his quaint remarks, his gift at repartee, his keen 
sense of the ludicrous, his polished irony, his geniality and 
imperturbable good humor, and his kindness of heart. All 
these, and many others, are remembered and cherished, and 
their fragrance remains although he has departed." 

The statement that he ever attended the Unitarian 
church has been contradicted, and I do not think it can 
be true. 

A Boston writer adds a few more particulars and names 
worthy of remembrance in this connection. He says : " It 
is well known that though in popular estimation the name 
of Mr. Choate is coupled with the annals of the bar of Suf- 
folk, he was an exotic here. It is not, however, so well 
known that though he came to this bar at a comparatively 
early age, he left behind him, in his Essex record, a career 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 47 

not surpassed by any thing which he achieved in after 
years in a more conspicuous forum. We have heard it 
remarked by one of his contemporaries there that by far the 
most brilliant portion of Mr. Choate's forensic life was be- 
fore he came to Boston, and that his magnificent perform- 
ances here were in a measure the dregs of his vast energies. 
This may have been exaggeration as expressed, but it is 
quite likely to be true in the main. Mr. Choate began 
practice in the town of Danvers in about the year 1825, 
and shortly after removed to Salem, and continued there 
till he came to Boston in 1834. His practice was confined 
to no part of the county ; he attended the courts in the 
three court towns, and was unquestionably the leading 
court lawyer in general miscellaneous trials. Here was 
nine years of constant court practice. The reports of the 
Supreme Court show him to have been in by far the great- 
est part of all the best litigations in the county, from the 
first cause in which his name appears in that court (Reu- 
ben Jones vs. the Inhabitants of Andover, 6 Pick. 59) to 
the time he left the county. We have been told he took 
all kinds of business, and was especially in repute as a 
criminal lawyer, and did not hesitate to try even liquor 
cases, and causes before justices of the peace. We have 
seen a gentleman who witnessed the first cause he ever 
tried, a defense, we think, before a justice of the peace 
in Danvers, and he represented his effort as full of the 
same fiery eloquence which marked his maturer efforts. 
He was probably compelled from necessity to take all gen- 
eral business which came to him ; for he was without prop- 
erty, and it is said when he left Salem he was probably 
worse than nothing in a money point of view. His clients, 
too. w-ere of a hard-fisted kind, who expected and de- 
manded a brave fight on ever so small an occasion, and ever 



48 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

SO desperate a cause. It was from this circumstance he 
must have acquired that discipline in the hai'd scJiool of 
b^isiness which fixed for life his brilliancy in a setting of 
plain matter-of-fact industry. He must also have had 
competitors well fitted to inspire ambition and nerve him 
to his best exertion. There must have been Saltonstall, 
Gushing, Luut, Pickering, Cummins, Shillabcr, Ward, 
and Lord ; all men in whom he must have found foemen 
worthy of his steel, not to mention the occasional compe- 
tition with great leaders from other portions of the State. 
We are told that he was quite as minute and elaborate in 
his preparation of arguments then as afterwards, and his 
efforts invariably attracted a crowded court house. One 
of the present justices of the Suj)reme Court was ap- 
pointed, in company with two others, referees in a cause 
to be heard at Danvers, in about the year 1826. He pro- 
ceeded the day before the time appointed to that town, 
and on alighting at the inn was met at the door by one he 
took for the innkeeper, by wdiom he was shown into the 
parlor. This man was dressed in very democratic attire, 
with cheap pantaloons, a long slouchy vest, a blue coat 
with metallic buttons (and quite too small for him), and 
a black cravat, much resembling a string, thrown around 
rather than tied on his neck. The next morning the 
referees met for the hearing, and the same young man 
arose and opened the case. The judge has said, that 
though he has since on many great occasions heard Mr. 
Choate, he never heard him surpass that opening. This 
must have been the first year of his practice. The young 
advocate afterwards informed the judge that he had sat up 
all night preparing his argument." 

Such are the proud voices of his early contemporaries. 

During these years, therefore, it appears he was estab- 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 49 

li!sliin<; his i)()sitioii as the first advocate of the Essex bar. 
lu the year 1834 he removed to Boston, as a sphere of en- 
deavor and aspiration to which he now felt fully equal. 



HIS BOSTON C A U E E K . . 

Here, in the New England metropolis, new scenes of 
professional encounter, new antagonists, and in some de- 
gree new law, rose before him. He was still young, but 
little over thirty. Yet he entered at once into the lists 
with the very ablest leaders of the Suffolk bar, and ad- 
vanced for seven years through a steady progi'ess of suc- 
cesses and of ftime. At first this strange-looking and sin- 
gular-acting youth was regarded by many of the old leaders 
who had long been masters of the situation, as rather odd 
than powerful ; and I have been told it was the fashion 
amonsc his new associates at the bar rather to sneer at his 
uncouth gestures, his outbreaks of voice, and his general 
originalities of proceeding in court, — especially his habit of 
arguing every case however trivial, with all his might, ex- 
alting the most insignificant subject of suit into even ma- 
jestic importance, — moved their mirth and disparagement. 
But when it was found that victory waited on the young 
champion, that verdicts after verdicts were won by him, and 
that his points of law were again and again sustained by the 
Supreme Court in banc, the opinion of the profession gi'ad- 
ually underwent a complete change ; until by the time he 
was chosen by the Massachusetts Legislature to the United 
States Senate in 1841, he was not thought by his profes- 
sional brethren inferior to any pleader at the New England 
bar; while by the general public he had for some time been 
considered superior as an advocate to any man except Dan- 



50 REMINISCENCES OF RQFUS CHOATE. 

iel Webster. He took Mr. Webster's chair in the Senate, 
wlien that gentleman took a pkice in General Harrison's 
cabinet. 

In the Senate he made those speeches which have most 
drawn upon him the attention of the nation. Most of them 
were carefully revised by himself and officially published. 
The speech on the Oregon question in n'})ly to Mr. Buchanan, 
our present President; tliose on the Tariff ; the Annexation 
of Texas ; To provide further remedial justice in the Courts 
of the United States, were printed in pamphlet form for 
popular circulation. They were carefully prepared, as I very 
well know, and ought to be read by every one who would 
attempt to appreciate the mind of this great man. They 
are as wise in thought as they are poetical in expression. 

In 1857, under Mr. Choate's immediate direction, the 
author of these reminiscences made some progress in pre- 
paring a single volume of his selected speeches, and I re- 
member what special value and importance he seemed to 
attach to his speeches on the Tariff question, and Protection 
to American labor. If he desired any to be preserved, it was 
those. 

In the Senate he was regarded as the especial friend and 
expounder of the views of the Secretary of State, Mr. Web- 
ster. This led to an unfortunate encounter between him 
and Mr. Clay, who was enraged at Mr. Webster's remain- 
ing in office under President Tyler. It was not at all sur- 
prising that Mr. Choate, still young, with comparatively little 
experience in the halls of legislation, should have been sur- 
prised into silence by the terrific onset of Henry Clay, chief 
of the Senate for twenty years. But what was indeed sur- 
prising was, the kind and appreciative manner in which he 
always spoke of Mr. Clay, as well afterwards as before this 
renconter. Again and again I have heard him cordially 



REMINISCENCES OF 11 U F U S CHOATE. 51 

acl^nowledge Clay's prodigious power of character and his 
magnificent oratory. He said the ultimate elements of 
Clay's greatness were wisdom to plan and genius to paciii- 
cate. In 1850, when Clay retracted his Farewells to the 
Senate, and stood once more in the Chamber, he remarked 
to me, that he rejoiced that Clay was there, for Clay could 
bring about a peaceful compromise, and Webster, he feared, 
could not. And in allusion to Clay's principles, he said, 
" They rise like the peaks of a mountain range from the 
table land of an illustrious life." Subsequently, in a let- 
ter from England to me, Mr. Choate said, " They have no 
Henry Clay here in this House of Commons." There were 
no bitter hatreds choking up Choate's great heart. He 
showed that his silence before Clay in the Senate was not 
due to want of invective ability to answer him, by his very 
successful passage at arms with Senator McDuflie, the old 
antagonist of Randolph of Roanoke. This happened after 
he had become a little more accustomed to his senatorial 
Chair, and the appalling strangeness of the elevated scene 
had somewhat passed away. Choate hated no man. He 
cither loved, admired, or was indifferent to men. 

His style of Senatorial address was the same passionate 
and pictorial stream of speech as his jury appeals. He 
enchained the ear, he reasoned cogently, he fascinated the 
intellect. I have heard the southern and western men 
especially, speak with a poetic enthusiasm of that dark- 
faced Senator from Massachusetts with curling locks and 
such a delightful flow of words. " He took us," they would 
say, "and carried us right along with him, as if we were 
on a beautiful stream, vath flowers and songs." 

In 1845, he returned to the practice of the profession 
of which he was so fond, and in which he was working 
when death found him still busy. 



52 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

It was about this time that I formed that personal ac- 
quaintance with him which continued uninterrupted for 
fourteen or fifteen years, to the day of his death, and Avhich 
was as intimate a relation of friendship as could naturally 
exist between youth and one so great, and so much older. 

From the time of his return from the Senate to the 
Bar I do not think anybody questioned his empire over the 
jury, and few who were intelligently informed doubted his 
commanding influence with the judges. The events of his 
life, from this date, are chiefly chronicled in the names of 
the great cases which he argued — cases where life, or honor, 
or vast sums of property, or all combined, were staked 
upon the issue. 

Among all these, the Albert J. Tirrell case was the 
most famous criminal defense he ever managed. The de- 
fendant was charged with the miirder of the woman who 
was alleged to be his mistress. The proof, to the unpro- 
fessional mind, was clear and damning, but it did not quite 
come up to the certainty which the law demands. The 
marvel, however, was to make the jury see it in that light 
— to make them take the professional view, and not the 
popular view. Among other lines of defense upon which 
the advocate rested was the singular one of " soinnamhul- 
ism." It will be shown in these Eeminiscences hereafter 
that this much satirized plea was not conceived by Mr. 
Choate himself, but was put into his mouth ; and that 
the poetical and effective presentation of it alone was the 
role which his genius played. The defendant was ac- 
quitted. 

Mr. Choate thought that the ample brief of his argu- 
ment in this case could be found among his papers, and 
that it ought to form a part of any collection of his 
Speeches. He said to me in 1857 : " If I can get hold of 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 53 

it wc will puzzle it out together. I can dig it up, I know." 
He (lid not live to do this. Some one, it is said, once told 
Tirrell, after his acquittal, that he existed only hy the suf- 
ferance of Clioate. 

Mr. Choate's talents proved much better when for the 
defense on the criminal side of the court than when en- 
listed against the accused. For when, in 1852, he was 
appointed the Attorney General of the State, his prosecu- 
tions were not generally successful. Juries disagi-eed, tri- 
als were repeated, defendants were acquitted ; presenting, 
in this regard, a marked contrast to the administration of 
that office by Governor ClilBFord, his successor. 

On the civil side of the court, the litigation of the 
most important rights and questions of ]}roj)erty which 
could arise in a city so commercial and wealthy as the 
metropolis of New England was carried on by him in one 
long, steady, and extraordinary current of success. Not a 
great many years ago a leading lawyer at the Suffolk bar 
retired from the active practice of the court room, and 
among other reasons for that retirement he gave this : 
" What's the use of my going on term after term fight- 
ing cases for corporations, with Choate to close on me for 
the plaintiff. If I have fifty cases, I sha'n't gain one of 
them." 

On many occasions the judges of the Supreme Judicial 
Court have expressed their appreciation of Mr. Choate's 
profound mastery of the princi})les of common law, and 
his exact command of all the rulings of the local law. In 
1850, Professor Greenleaf, the author of the well-known 
work on "Evidence," told the writer that in a civil or a 
criminal case, taking law and fact into view as they were 
to be presented in presence of a jury, he considered Choate, 
to use his exact words, " wo/'e terrible than Webster." At 



54 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

the bar meeting, when he died, one of his oldest and 
toughest antagonists, whom I have often seen pitted 
against him, declared that though he had known Jere- 
miah Mason, Sam. Dexter, Daniel AVehster, and many 
other warrior-lawyers, yet he thought, as a court combat- 
ant, Mr. Choate was more formidable than any man he 
had ever known. 

As an illustration of the estimates set upon his power 
in the law, independent of his advocacy, it is well known 
that he was more than once offered a judgeship on the 
bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. It is not 
so well known, but it is true, that he was once, if not 
twice, made aware that he could have the Attorney Gener- 
alship of the United States if he desired it. These honors 
of the ermine he declined. I know also that when Judge 
Curtis resigned his seat on the bench of the United States 
Supreme Court, Mr. Choate himself had the opinion that 
he might receive the appointment if he would allow some 
friends who desired it to intimate his willingness to accept 
it. I urged him myself to allow certain representations to 
be made for him, reminding him that that post would give 
him a change of toils, and some respite from them. But 
he peremptorily refused, and declared that nothing would 
tempt him to put that ermine on. Said he, " Washington 
is very attractive ; but not Washington shut up in the 
lobby and on the bench of the Supreme Court." Unlike 
Curran, who retired upon the judicial bench of Master of 
the Eolls ; unlike Erskine, whose career of twenty years 
came to a dead stop on the woolsack of the Chancellor of 
Eno-land Mr. Choate was resolved to die in the arena, and 
with the professional harness on his back. 

Only a few years ago, he remarked to me, " I am read- 
ing over again Coke upon Littleton. He is an enthusiast 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 55 

in the old law, and I want liim to inspire my enthusiasm ; 
for it would be dreadful, you know, to lose one's interest 
in the profession to which a man is going to devote the 
last ten years of his life," The last ten years of his life ! 
Prophetic words. He seemed to feel then that another 
decade must end his intellectual struggle ; and alas ! within 
a little more than seven years — three years short of the 
prophecy — those lips received the sacred seal of death. 

During those last years, I often urged him to take a 
little rest, to go to some rural spot, to recreate his jaded 
faculties ; but the advice was all ineffectual. He could no 
more rest than the Wandering Jew. Summer aui.1 winter, 
in season and out of season, were to him all alike times for 
labors to be done and new glories to be won. One torrid 
summer's day, I suggested to liiiu to run down to the soft 
Mediterranean airs of Newport, and not to take his books, 
but throw himself u})Oii the social tides and chances of the 
pleasure-seeking place. " Why," said he, " if 1 did, I 
should hang myself upon the first tree before night." 

Pinkney, he would often remark, had great seasons of 
recreative repose and entire change from his tremendous 
labors at the bar. He went as negotiator to London ; he 
was our envoy to Italy, and an ambassador to Russia. 
These were great breathing spaces to him, and thus he got 
re-made every now and then. This example, however, 
never seemed to impress Mr. Choate himself as a lesson to 
him, until quite recently, when he one day observed to 
me, that now he should like to go in some- diplomatic 
capacity to a continental point of European interest, where 
he might be in the neighborhood of some of the great libra- 
ries of the old world, and, as he expressed it, " have a regu- 
lar frolic." And he thought it not impossible that ulti- 
matclv such might be his fortune, I think if at the open- 



56 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

ing of the present national administration, of wliicli he was 
so self-sacrificing a supporter, he had been offered a diplo- 
matic post abroad, whether lofty or low, he would at once 
have accepted it. Then, journeying through European 
scenery, wdth a change of occupation — ^for occupation was 
indispensable to him — he would have revived and renewed 
his worn energies, ere the arrow had entered his soul too 
deeply for all the medicines of earth. That recreative 
temptation was not held out to him, and he went to his 
office in Court street daily, till a very short time before he 
died. 

In his later years of practice, he took up a branch of 
the law of which many make a specialty, and adopted it 
as one only of the professional provinces through which he 
ranged as a master. That was the Patent law. He was 
very fond of this department of legal science, and it would 
have been happy for the world as for him, if he had de- 
voted himself to it with some exclusiveness, and aban- 
doned minor and miscellaneous cases. Its issues involve 
so much money that it would have fully remunerated him, 
and a few great patent cases a year would have demanded 
the occasional straining of his powers to high levels, and a 
constant attention sufficient to preserve him from ennui 
and brooding. 

In 1855, he received an injury from a sprain and a fall 
while arguing a case in Dedham. As a result of it, one of 
his legs became inflamed, an abscess formed, and after a 
long time of confinement a surgical operation was per- 
formed upon his limb. Tliat sickness, I think, was the 
first deadly blow to the full and glorious exertion of his 
powers. He told me that when he took the ether which 
was given him, it was very pleasant till the moment came 
of utterly surrendering consciousness ; then death itself 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 57 

could not have been more awful to him, and he strujrefled 
in himself as for life. From that sickness and shock, he 
came out again to his round of daily cares ; but he came 
out haunted and overawed by the shadow of his past deeds 
of splendor, and with little more to hope for save to keep 
his career from sinking under the comparison. 

Some time before this event, upon the great stage of 
Faneuil Hall, he spoke, on one occasion, with such tremen- 
dous physical movement and energy, that he thought he 
suffered an internal injury, and ever after that he was 
quite careful to regulate his more frantic gesticulations. 
But it was from the time of this Dedham sickness, I think, 
that the star of his genius slowly waned. He did not lose 
so much in pure intellectual power, but in energy and mag- 
netism. The alacrity, too, with which he would take hold 
of every topic suggested to him, and the celerity with which 
his mind would run all round it, and away from it, and 
come back to it, seemed to abate. Before that sickness, 
he was the most remarkable man I ever knew, for beino* 
able to carry on any number of lines of thinking and talk- 
ing at the same time. No matter how far you branched 
off, on episodical or parenthetical topics, he would pursue 
the diverging track to the close, skip back from it to the 
main line with sure precision, and return upon and close 
that chief topic with certain accuracy. But in late years he 
would say, " Let us finish one thing at a time ; we are now 
upon this point. When we finish this, we will go to that." 

His oratory, too, underwent a marked revolution. He 

no longer tore a passion to tatters. He no longer seemed 

to try to whirl along the jury or the audience in a 

maelstrom of passionate feeling ; but he spoke more 

calmly, and even more logically, than before. In his 

platform sjieaking, I do not think lie tried after this to 

.3* 



58 REMINISCENCES OF RQFUS CHOATE. 

produce any purely oratorio effect. His lectures before the 
Boston Mercantile Library, and other bodies, were written 
to refresh his mind with excursions into a varied literary 
domain ; for he said to me, " In their preparation, I am 
led all about my library, and I consult and renew my ac- 
quaintance with hundreds of my books." 

His recent political Speeches were written rather care- 
fully, and, contrary to his general habit, were written to 
be read rather tlian heard. For, both them and his later 
lectures, he delivered in a comparatively low voice — the 
strange music of tone, as of a chant, which all who heard 
him must remember floating through their cadences ; but 
many parts of them were spoken with rather the tone of 
poetic soHloquy than of direct and pointed exhortation. 
Indeed, often he became quite inaudible, as many of those 
who hung upon his accents would murmuringly testify. 

In his last tribute to Webster, " the guide, philosopher 
and friend," as he styled him, at the Celebration supper at 
the Kevere House, the change in his speaking was very 
manifest. However, on that occasion he produced a very 
marked effect, by uttering his emphatic sentences slowly 
and entirely separated from each other by a pause. " for 
one more peal of that clarion voice !" then a sublime pause ; 
" one more throb of American feeling !" and so on, through 
the entire peroration of his speech. On that occasion he 
was for the last time on earth eloquent, as lie would meas- 
ure eloquence. Into those final dropping sentences, he dis- 
tilled the very essence of his most eloquent feeling. 

When Fisher Ames pronounced the eulogy on Alexan- 
der Hamilton he said, " These tears which we shed will 
never dry up. My heart grows liquid as I speak, and I 
could pour it out like water." Mr. Choate often alluded 
to the mournful beauty of these words. But Fisher Ames 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 59 

did not love Alexander Hamilton any more than Clioate 
loved Webster ; and as now he rose up like Ames to speak 
over the p^rave of his great friend, — and stood there gaunt, 
sunkf.'n, suffering, with glittering eyes, — and ejaculated 
those farewell words with concentrated energy, as if the 
genius of his life had all rallied upon them, — the solemn- 
toned syllables sounded not like a speech, but a grand 
burial anthem. 

When he left the Senate of the Union, in 1845, his 
public official life may be said to have closed. 

Addresses in public during the last fifteen years of his 
life were what most caught the i)opular eye and ear, yet, 
after all, during the whole time, with very rare exceptions, 
his heart and head were really in his law. He never thought 
much or talked mucli about his platform off jrts. They cost 
him a good deal of labor, but so far as regarded their suc- 
cess with the pul)lic he seemed to forget them as soon as 
they were uttered. Xobody had any encouragement to com- 
pliment him, or to tell liiin what people said about any of 
his exhibitions. He had absolutely no vanity. He spoke 
on literarv themes for the delight oi the thou";hts, and the 
rapture of the enthusiasm which their utterance evoked in 
his own soul and mind. Whether the audience was large or 
small, whether they liked it or did not like it, whether the 
stage behind him was covered with dignitaries or nobodies, 
seemed quite indifferent to him. The next morning after 
any siDeech, however brilliant or exhausting, you would al- 
ways find him in his office early, hard at work, and having 
taken a walk and a snuff of literature, too, before he came 
down there. Such was the case during the last fifteen years 
of his career. Whether he was more alive to the public in 
early years before that time, I do not know. It is hardly 
to be presumed, however, that he was ; for the appetite for 



60 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

admiration grows by what it feeds on, not lessens. Erskine 
and Pinkney both grew vainer and vainer, till they died. 
But there was no other man in the world who thouuht and 
felt so moderately about Kufus Choate as Rufus Choate 
himself. 

The lecturing system, in its present enormous develop- 
ment, he had a low opinion of. An occasional Address he 
thought well enough. A college or academic Address he 
thought honorable to the orator, and a happy thing to do. 
But lecturing, as a main object of a man's mind and ener- 
gies, he thought very meanly of " It leads to nothing and 
comes to nothing," he would say. Casting the bread of ex- 
hortation upon the waters in the hope of its returning after 
many days was not his fashion of action. He wanted some 
tangible object always before him — an election by the peo- 
ple, a vote by a re]3resentative body, a verdict from the 
jury. 

From 1845 the strictly professional current of his life 
was only varied by his hurried visit to Europe, his addresses 
and his services in the Constitutional Convention of Massa- 
chusetts in 1853. That flying European visit was in 1850, 
and some interesting observations of his upon it, will be 
found further on in this volume, coupled with extracts from 
letters of his written to me from various points of interest 
abroad — London, Paris, Switzerland and various other 
places. 

His course in the Constitutional Convention was mem- 
orable. He was in a hostile body, but he won every one's 
regard ; and although antagonistic to the feelings of the 
majority, his oratory swayed with all its legitimate influ- 
ence. The Convention was one of much strength of intel- 
lect and celebrity. It was the only representative body in 
which Charles Sumner and he ever sat together. All his 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 61 

speeches here were carefully considered. But his great 
Speech in the convention, and the great Speech of the ses- 
sion, was upon the integrity of the Judiciary, and against 
elective judges in the commonwealth. He was very un- 
well at the time, and the summer day was of most oppres- 
sive temperature. The orator looked wretchedly, but he 
rose in his bench and delivered his speech to the delegates 
with growing power and steady march to the last syllable. 
As he uttered the last word, he sank down, pressed his 
hand to his head, rose again and staggered up toward the 
door on the outside of the semicircle of seats. His strength 
and life were so utterly exhausted by his speech that he 
could not reach it unaided. He was helped out, placed in 
a carriage and borne home. 

It is recorded that Cicero often fainted after speakiag ; 
and great actors on the stage, it is said, have frequently 
lain upon the boards unable to rise when the curtain had 
fallen on their intense tragic impersonations ; but I never 
knew any other orator beside Mr. Choate who would so 
utterly exhaust and tear himself all to pieces in his speak- 
ing. In Washington, an eminent lawyer told me he found 
him once in bed in the morning, apparently deadly sick. 
An hour or two after he went into the United States Su- 
preme Court, — and there was Choate. It was a great case, 
and he was arguing and haranguing the gowned Judges with 
all the strength of his lungs, his nerves braced to spasmodic 
action, and his eyes blazing as with supernatural fires. 

In this speech in the Constitutional Convention Choate 
was successful ; for although the feeling in favor of en- 
larging the jurisdiction of the people was very strong, that 
barrier of independent Courts was preserved even in the 
constitution framed then and there. During all the ses- 
sions of this Convention, however, he carried on more or 



62 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

less law, and with the exception of this convention he 
could not be said to have turned from the Law at all. 

In recent notices of his death the remark has been 
made that he sometimes turned aside from legal labors to 
prepare academic and other orations. He never turned 
aside in the least to prepare them. Not a single case at 
law was refused or slighted for them. He had exactly the 
same court programme that he would have had if he were 
not prejjaring them. When he was to make such an effort, 
he put off preparation till the last minute, and then worked 
very early in the morning, and during little lulls in the 
stormy progress of his cases, to complete them. These 
labors were superimposed upon, not substituted for his 
professional day's work. Occasionally he would make a 
slight attempt to " cut out of a case" which was marked 
for trial on the day before he was to deliver some address 
to which public expectation looked with interest. But 
this attempt was rarely effectual ; for the Court would 
never grant any indulgence for such a cause, law having a 
prevailing jealousy of letters ; and his junior, who had 
retained him in the cause, of course regarding it as dis- 
posing of the case by suicide, to go on with the trial vnih.- 
out Choate. 

I recollect that on the occasion of a lecture, not very 
long ago, when an important cause in which he was re- 
tained was reached in the Supreme Court on the very day 
before the evening on which he was to speak, quite a num- 
ber of Mr. Choate's friends at the bar interested themselves 
to get him out of the case, and give him at least one day 
and a night to complete his preparation for the lecture, and 
to rest. He was very anxious for it himself, but he seemed 
wholly powerless to promote it. He never could bear to 
disappoint a brother lawyer, nor indeed to say "no" to 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. G3 

anybody. The effort for his brief emancipation failed both 
with tlie Court and his own junior ; but the next night, 
there he was on the platform, sick with sleeplessness and 
care ; but speaking with ardent passion to an immense 
audience, among whom several of the very judges of the 
Supreme Court appeared gi-atified listeners. In the course 
of that address, he told me afterwards, he felt his little 
strength leaving liim, and the hall and tiers of people 
growing dim ; and he grew so faint tliat he meditated 
turning round and sitting down. " But," said he, " I con- 
cluded I would go on till I dropped down." His excite- 
ment bore him up and carried him through. 

Probably the most brilliant lecture he ever delivered was 
one very early in his career, on " The Sea." He himself 
always regarded that lecture with enthusiasm. He told 
me that it was stolen out of his pocket in New York, but 
that it was so fixed in his mind that he could have recalled 
it and written it all out at any time within a year or two 
after its loss. The sea itself always had to him a mighty 
and mysterious itnpressiveness. 

Of all his political addresses, the ones in which he 
seemed to throw his heart most warmly and his imagina- 
tion most brilliantly, were those of the campaign wdiich 
closed w^itli the election of General Taylor to the presi- 
dency ; and those of the campaign of the compromises 
which closed with the defeat of Daniel Webster for the 
nomination to that office. These were in 1848, and in 
1850 to 1852. Taylor and Webster were charmed words 
to him, notwithstanding the latter thought the nomination 
of the former was one " not fit to be made." In the career 
of the frontier captain, Zachary Taylor ; his intrepid march 
of victory from Monterey to Buena Vista ; his answer to 
Santa Anna when summoned to surrender, the imagination 



64 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C 11 GATE. 

of Mr. Clioate found a field of the most passionate and pic- 
turesque address. 

Who that heard him will ever forget his allusions to 
Diogenes with his lantern, and his description of the search 
of the Whigs for an honest man ; and how on a distant bat- 
tle field, in a stranger land, they lifted the canvas of a tat- 
tered tent, through whose torn peak the stars were ghm- 
mering, and there, in the old war-stained hero before them, 
they found the object of their search and hopes ! And 
how the old cradle of Faneuil Hall rocked and rang again 
and again as he described the modest conqueror of Buena 
Yista ! And what a gleam of boyish delight rushed over 
his features as, remembering he was speaking in Boston, 
which calls itself " Athens," he shouted out, " Why, he's 
got a library, and reads it like Julius Caesar in his tent ! 
and he writes a better letter to-day than Arthur Duke of 
Wellington." 

His speeches in Faneuil Hall in defense of Daniel Web- 
ster's compromise of 1850, and recommending him as New 
England's candidate for the Presidency, are to be ranked 
among the very warmest and best of his political essays. 
In them he dealt with the majestic idea of American na- 
tionality, its original compromises, and its essential fra- 
gility and delicacy. But chiefly his tone was inspired by 
the rememlirance that he was speaking for the god of his 
intellectual idolatry. 

His love of Webster was at once womanly and Homeric. 
It was as if Achilles had loved Agamemnon. It was as Cur- 
ran did love Grattan. When the use of Faneuil Hall liad 
been refused to Webster by the Boston aldermen, but after- 
wards the refusal was revoked, he broke forth in exulting 
eloquence, as, standing on its ample stage, he described its 
gates as open now — " Aye, and on golden hinges turning." 



BEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 65 

It was either in this speech or the one of the next March, 
1852, that he closed a highly-wrought peroration by a sin- 
gularly homely and practical illustration which exemplified 
the startling anti-climax which was always one of his ora- 
toric weapons. When, in summing up the thoughts which 
for an hour he had hurled upon the crowded audience 
surging in the vast hall before him, he reached what ap- 
peared to be the acme of powerful eulogium upon Web- 
ster, he suddenly stopped, threw himself forward in the 
attitude in which a sailor would heave on rope on the 
ship's deck. " Now, boys !" he exclaimed, "don't you think 
he'd be a good pilot ?" There was a loud response from 
the crowd. " Then all together now, and heave him on 
to the quarter deck ;" and amid tumultuous cheering the 
orator sat down. This little finale was a])parently not 
premeditated, as the speech was ; for next day it was not 
in all, if it was in any, of the reports of the meeting. 

At the famous Baltimore Convention of 1852, which 
nominated General Scott — the conqueror of the halls of the 
Montezumas — as President of the American States, passing 
over the great civilian Webster, Choate made one of the 
most fervid and striking speeches of his life. The Conven- 
tion was composed of delegates from all the States ; men 
elected, in great measure, for power and political position ; 
— ex-governors, counselors, leaders of the people, chiefs of 
parties were all there ; and it was, in point of intellect, a 
very superior body to the national House of Kepresenta- 
tives. They, therefore, could appreciate Choate's intellec- 
tual splendors fully. And the southern branch of the 
Convention, especially, were completely carried away by 
this new and strange eloquence. 

I have heard, and it was currently said at the time, that 
in the tedious struggle for a nominee, so much were the 



66 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

southern men impressed by Choate's speaking and appear- 
ance, they crowded round him, and more than once inti- 
mated that they would vote for him, as nominee, certainly 
for Vice President, if not for President. But there was 
no bribe beneath the stars that could swerve Choate from 
his allegiance to Webster. Next to his God, he believed 
in Daniel Webster. 

The public address to which he devoted the most study 
of his life, the longest time, and the most elaborate polish, 
was his eulogy on Mr. Webster delivered at Dartmouth 
College. Mr. Everett and Mr. Choate were successively 
invited to deliver the eulogy before the city authorities of 
Boston, but each declined. About the same time, or a little 
before, Mr. Choate accepted the invitation of the college at 
Hanover to deliver a eulogy there. He remembered that 
Dartmouth was his own college as well as that of the illus- 
trious dead ; and, as he said to me, he should have a year 
to look over and think over the great theme. " And, be- 
sides," said he, " up there before the college I can take a 
more scholarly and academic and wide-ranging course of 
illustration than would be quite pertinent here, before our 
city dignitaries." It was the only address I ever knew him 
to begin upon before-hand. He was invited in October, 
1852, and he delivered it in August, 1853. Meantime I 
believe he worked upon the eulogy, creating its thoughts 
and painting its scenery every moment which he could 
snatch from his office and the courts. It was the pastime 
and the toil of nearly a whole year to him. 

The delivery of the oration he did not consider to have 
been as successful as the scene of its utterance and the labor 
of its preparation would have rendered jDrobable. When 
he rose to speak, he was, as usual, worn down by anxious 
labors. He spoke late in the afternoon, to an audience not 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 67 

fresh, and with the shadows of evening darkening round 
him. But the oration itself was carefully revised by him, 
and it is, as a whole, the best specimen of his academic style 
which he ever pronounced or preserved. 

In it you can see his famous long sentences, the clauses 
accumulated and elaborated and rolled on, heaping up and 
resounding like the long volume of an Atlantic billow break- 
ing upon the shore. Long as his sentences are on the page, 
in his mouth as delivered they seemed short and intelligible. 
He spoke them very quickly, but without headlong haste ; 
each clause had its full emphasis, and the subordination of 
each member to the whole paragraph was constantly pre- 
served. These long sentences in all his speeches, are full of 
thought, weighty with occasional aphorisms, flashing with 
sudden wit, and decorated with flaming and florid hues. 
As the gay bird of Paradise, showing new beauty in every 
feather of her painted pinions, flashes on her way with a 
wing strong from the ligaments which the glittering colors 
hide, so this rich rhetoric is inextricably interlaced and in- 
terwoven with the substantial thoughts which underlie and 
support it. The ornaments do but wing tlie ideas to the 
goal with accelerated momentum. "The i3lumage that 
adorns the royal bird supports its flight." 

This funeral Oration, also, appreciates what was often 
overlooked in Mr. Webster's unpractical statesmanship and 
services, so hard and strong and matter-of-fact — that was, 
not the mere usefulness, but the essential splendor of his 
career. 

In this oration, too, the oratorical wealth of the En- 
glish language is advantageously seen. The words of our 
language are used in every variety for impressiveness, some- 
times for poetical impression, sometimes for simple strength, 
sometimes for mere explanatory description. The Latin and 



68 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

the Saxon elements of the tongue are both freely emijloyed. 
Next to the Greek language, I think Mr. Choate valued the 
English tongue as a medium of oratory. The Greek he 
thought superior to any and all Gothic tongues. Highly as 
he ranked Webster's great Hayne speech, he was accus- 
tomed to say the Crown speech of Demosthenes was unap- 
proachable by any orator speaking in any Gothic language. 
" No Gothic tongue," I heard him say, " has the loords to 
make a ' Crown speech' out of." And if any orator ever 
knew ivords, both as weapons of thought and as words 
merely, it was himself. How he studied language, its ety- 
mology, its synonyms, and its very essence, we shall see 
hereafter. 

In many respects this eulogy upon Webster may be con- 
sidered the Crown speech of Kufus Choate's life. 

Certainly no American before or after Webster has ever 
laid down in his grave with the voice of a panegyric, so 
sustained, so solemn, so splendid, resounding amid the drums 
and trumpets of his obsequies. 

In 1847, and for two or three years during the period of 
my recollections of him, Mr. Choate was a regent of the 
Smithsonian Institute, and largely contributed to shape it 
for success. He felt much interest in it, and would take 
time from most valuable and remunerative labors to attend 
to it. He was also a member of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, and a member of the New England Historic 
and Genealogical Society. 

There was no grand scheme for popular enlightenment 
or benefit, of a literary, scientific or practical character, to 
which he would not make time to lend a helping thought, 
and, if possible, a helping hand. 

When the project was first started of introducing camels 
into the South-west Territories to perform the long journeys 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 69 

of the vast and barren spaces there, he gave himself to 
advance the idea as if it were a private speculation of his 
own. Morning after morning he literally tore himself away 
from legal studies and legal claims to think about and ad- 
vise in this most useful application of the eastern beast of 
the Desert to the western wildernesses. He never, however, 
received any credit for it from anybody ; nor, as usually 
happened with his disinterested labors of love, was he at 
all publicly known in the matter ; though the experi- 
ment succeeded, as there are now many camels in the 
country. 

One senatorial term in the Senate of the Union was all 
the time given him on which to play any high national part, 
with the eyes of the country upon him. That was not long 
enoudi for the national mind or the national heart to set- 
tie towards him, as undoubtedly it would have done could 
he have been well known throughout the land. If ever a 
man was fitted by culture and by disposition to be the dar- 
ling of the people, it was Rufus Choate. He loved to be 
alone in his library, but all his intellectual sympathies were 
with the great, passionate, eloquence-loving people. The 
people, the Democracy are eloquent. An Aristocracy or 
the courts of an empire are stiff and silent. Tacitus, Mr. 
Choate used to say to me, was the Macaulay of antiquity. 
But Tacitus, he added, was unhappy, for his only sunshine 
was the smile of the emperor ; but in his breast were all 
the swelling sentiments of Roman history and grandeur, 
guarded and silent. 

Mr. Choate's knowledge of the people was far more 
practical than has been thought. He knew their routine 
of life, their various thinkings, their tastes, their jealousies, 
their ambitions ; and he sympathized with them far more 
than he did with the artificial etiquette and conventional 



70 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

clownishness of classes who think themselves above the 
people. Golden parlors and the glittering life of wealth 
he had no fancy for. He said that he thought what was 
called " society" in this country was frivolous and unprof- 
itable ; its thoughts feeble, its talk trivial, and its person- 
ages usually people of no real account. In his youth he 
had driven the cows to pasture ; he had kept Thanksgiving 
with the boys and girls of old Essex ; he had gone to " the 
muster," he had gone to the plain country church ; and no 
son of New England felt more deeply than he the imprint 
upon his nature of genuine New England country institu- 
tions. A haughty and foreign tone he was as incapable of 
taking into his mind, as he was of receiving a " foreign air" 
upon his good old Essex county manners. 

Hence came all the allusions and images which dot and 
sometimes even dignify his oratory, taken from plain New 
England life. The school, the home, and the table with 

O 7 7 

the Bible on it, the meeting-house, the desk, the continen- 
tal battle field, and even the capricious weather of our ice- 
bound. Puritanic Massachusetts. Had events, therefore, 
taken him upon the high places of national observation, he 
would undoubtedly have won the heart of America. In 
other States, as in his own State, people who disagreed 
with him would have pardoned him, and multitudes who 
could not comprehend him would have been fond of and 
admired him. 

I think he had a feeling in his own mind that the na- 
tional Senate was, after all, the fit theater to close his life. 
All the really great men of the Senate, he would remark 
in conversation, are or have been able lawyers. Law pre- 
pares a man for statesmanship. The United States Senate 
is the most dignified and attractive body in America, if not 
in all the world. Edmund Burke might have spoken there 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 71 

with far more effect than in the British House of Commons. 
The Hayne speech of Mr. Webster was possible in the Amer- 
ican Senate ; it would not have been possible in the Brit- 
ish Parliament. The society of Washington concentrates 
the most celebrated men in all North America. Remarks 
like these, which he more than once made to me, would 
lead to the belief that, had politics pointed differently 
among his constituents, it would have been very grateful 
to him to round and crown his life of toils, so terrible, by a 
series of intellectual services rendered to his country, while 
standing on summits of political eminence so splendid that 
her eye and ear must inevitably have been attracted and 
fixed upon his whole past and present professional career. 
Then the power and beauty of his accomplished utterance 
would have been felt all over the land ; and then he would 
not have died, as some would style him, a " Massachusetts 
great man," but an American great man. 

Now, however, whatever may be published about him 
will never give him the jjlace in universal memory to which 
his unlimited wealth of learning, his comprehensive and 
varied powers, the Avide scope and sheer strength of his 
understanding entitled him. He claimed no position for 
himself, and the world does not know him well enough to 
take him and place him in his appropriate niche. Vaguely 
and beautifully the dim traditions of the wise thoughts, 
couched in exquisite language, which fascinated multi- 
tudes, will float about men's stories and recollections ; 
but when Youth turns to the book, and the volumes of his 
Speeches are opened, the song of the strange man will be 
hushed, — and the music of no other orator can recall it to 
us again. 

Inasmuch as events denied him this political plane of 
final effort, it was very unlucky for Mr. Choate that no 



72 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

series of law cases of national interest presented them- 
selves, for his advocacy, during his service at the Bar. Er- 
skine had in his court room a vast stage erected, upon 
which the eyes of all England were fixed, when he defended 
her free Press, and bafHed her Prime Minister's prosecutions. 
And the jury eloquence of Curran, when he stood up for 
his countrymen, persecuted by the spies and informers of 
Tory administrations, reverberated through Ireland, and all 
over the world. In our own country, William Wirt, Pink- 
ney, and Sargeant S. Prentiss, had each of them opportu- 
nities of professional achievement of great national inter- 
est. Wirt's description of that Catiline of the Union, 
Aaron Burr ; and the lairy island in the Ohio, on which 
Blennerhassett had reared " the shrubbery that Shenstone 
might have envied," long lived in the recollections of his 
own generation, and are now repeated in every school-room 
by the rising generation of Young-America. Pinkney 
passed the prime of his career in the national cajDital, with 
the thoughts of America turned to him for more than ten 
years as the most brilliant orator she could show to the 
world ; and Sargeant S. Prentiss enjoyed at least one 
chance of national attention. For when he maintained 
in Congress his legal right to a seat, as the representative 
of a sovereign State under her broad seal, he was listened 
to by a national audience stretching beyond the white 
peaks of the Alleghanies, and beyond the blue waters of the 
Mississippi. But at no portion of Mr. Choate's profes- 
sional course did the horizon of his professional duties 
open in the direction of such scenes of noble interest. His 
course was the routine of an eminent New England lawyer ; 
but unlike those champions of the Courts, to whom he was 
in no sense intellectually inferior, it was never interrupted 
by any passage of grand occasions sufficiently elevated to 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 73 

give to his professional life even one scene of high, sus- 
tained, and epic interest. 

Students will hereafter read his arguments in the law 
reports, and scholars will read his rhetoric in the volumes 
of his speeches ; hut unless some wizard rises to call him 
back, by his words, to our fond imaginations, none shall 
bid those dry bones live again. None but a magician like 
himself, " a conjuror," as his first rivals called him, shall 
teach those who have not heard him in the moments of 
his supreme passion, to know and understand this meteoric 
man. He was an Athenian Greek kept back for New 
Ensj-land ; and, nurtured at her bosom, he learned to love 
his mother land. But his mind seemed ever yearning for 
the ancient clime of liistoric splendor ; the oaken chaplet ; 
the pomp of the processions ; the games, the rhapsodists, 
the strange eloquence that shook the world to Artaxerxes' 
throne. 

The desire was often expressed that he might snatch 
from life the leisure for a book on some inspiring theme, 
in w^hich his genius might be in some fuller manner da- 
guerreotyped than it could possibly be in speeches upon 
temporary topics and of hasty production. And at one 
time the literary world were startled by the positive an- 
nouncement that he was actually engaged upon a history 
of that brilliant democracy of Greece with whose arena he 
was so fondly familiar. But although I believe that at 
one time he contemplated something of the sort, yet it was 
soon abandoned ; for, as he said to me, " I might seize 
the time, but I can't get my mind into the frame to com- 
pose. When I come home, even if I have an hour or two 
to spare, my mind is torn to pieces by the jar of the day, 
and I cannot do more than get in the mood for composition 
when I find my time is up." Although great orators do not 



74 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

usually make good writers, as Charles James Fox exem- 
plified in his fragment of English history, yet such was 
Mr. Choate's critical and life-long classic culture, that it 
would be generally agreed by those who knew him best, 
that had he gone abroad and devoted a year or two to the 
production of a brief, brilliant, and truly Choatean volume 
on a cono-enial theme, it would have been to him a monu- 
ment more lasting than brass ; and it would certainly be 
far better than the best memorial which any others can 
now build for him. 

In one point his life was a noble example to youth. 
Although apparently of a temperament burning up with 
all the passion of the East, yet never, amid all his suc- 
cesses, his flatteries or his temptations, did he abandon 
himself for a moment to any dissipations. Studious, well- 
governed, intellectual to the last, he neither allowed him- 
self to wander about idly, like Erskine, babbling with a 
silly vanity of his past glories ; nor, like too many of the 
dazzling men of England and America, did he grow luxu- 
rious with success, and lose himself in the vortex of any 
vices. When men of ardent genius have gained the goals 
which shone afar upon their youth, the excitements of hope 
die away, and too often they seek, in wine or gambling or 
other stimulants, the delightful delirium of passionate 
joys. But no man ever saw Mr. Choate press the Circean 
cup too freely to his lips ; and no friend mourned to behold 
him put life and honor in the dice-boxes of chance. 

It was often hinted that he was secretly an opium- 
eater ; and that thus he baffled scrutiny, and rose in secret 
into the hellish heaven of sensual voluptuousness. I know 
that this was not so ; and for three reasons : first, he told 
me himself that he had never taken an opium narcotic 
except once, in the form of laudanum, for a troublesome 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 75 

tooth, and then it almost drove him distracted. This is 
confirmed by the Eev. Dr. Adams, his clergyman, who de- 
nied it solemnly standing over his coffin. He based his 
confidence upon the physician who had been Mr. Choate's 
medical attendant for twenty years, who said that, so far 
from Mr. Choate's system being affected by opium, he 
could put him to sleep with a Dover's powder. Second ; in 
all the time in which I was in his office and saw him 
hourly, and afterwards when seeing him freely and con- 
stantly in his library or in his chamber, sick or well, sitting 
up or lying down, I never observed the slightest trace or 
indication of the use or presence of this drug ; and third, 
and most decisive, the effect of opium as described by men 
of science, and as exemplified in the splendid but scattering 
intellect of De Quincey, is to unloose the grasp of the logi- 
cal faculty, to brighten the mind preternaturally, but to 
render its operations less consecutive and close to the point. 
Now, Mr. Choate's logical processes were finer and firmer 
as he grew older, to the very last. His reasoning powers 
grew even stronger with his years. If he lost anywhere, 
it was in the flash and fervor of his intellectual action ; but 
to the very last, his logical powers played with remorseless 
accuracy and steadiness. 

Tliis last reason for exonerating him from all this 
charo-e of opium indulgence is unanswerable. Probably, 
what gave the charge the little currency it ever had, was 
the corrugated, bloodless, startling look of his haggard 
physiognomy. But the strange worn look was the result 
of the stormy working of his brain vexed by incessant 
toils, not the result of unholy passion in its agony of delight. 
Speaking to me of a renowned statesman across the water, 
he said, "He drinks brandy so badly, that it's an even 
chance at any moment, whether he's drunk or sober. He 



76 EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

lias no excuse wliatever for it. The excitement of his legal 
profession is over, to be sure, but he is unpardonable, for 
he is a learned man ; he knows every thing ; he has all 
literature, all knowledges to fall back upon." 

UjDon " literature and all knowledges," Mr, Choate him- 
self fell back more and more in his later years ; and the 
consolations it gave him should admonish young genius 
everywhere, especially in our excitable land, to cultivate 
it as an ultimate refuge and solace. 

For this example of self-restraint, then ; this career 
which eschewed and scorned dissipation ; this sustained and 
dignified industry ; this conquest of the sensual and exal- 
tation of the intellectual elements of happiness, the life of 
Mr. Choate is, indeed, admirable. He never wandered 
round among men — the relic of himself — a man of pleasure 
and success, the walking epitaph of his heroic days ; but 
he kept his armor on and his drill up to the mark of battle, 
and died in the very midst of professional war, 

" The old Whig party is dead," said Daniel Webster, 
gasping, on his death-bed. Mr. Choate was a Whig of two 
generations. In 1856, when the Republican party nomi- 
nated Colonel John C. Fremont as President, many Whigs 
joined them. Still more rallied around the neutral flag of 
Fillmore. But Choate came out flat-footed and fair-faced 
for Buchanan, the nominee of the party against which, for 
more than thirty years, he had volleyed incessant thunder. 
It is not the province of these Reminiscences to defend or 
to assail him for this act. I have only to say that as one 
opposed to those politics which he then took up, I know 
that his motives in the action were pure, high and noble. 

He talked with me upon this subject long and earnestly. 
The sacredness of conversation, whose character would 
naturally stamp it as private, although no seal of secrecy 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 77 

enjoined its inviolability, forbids its publication. But I 
may say that all the line of argument and observation he 
suggested to me ujDon it, was patriotic, disinterested and 
statesmanlike. I had the misfortune then to experience 
the only great difference of feeling from him I ever knew 
during all the years in which he honored me with his pa- 
ternal kindness. But from all he said to me, no one for 
an instant could have doubted the purity of his heart or 
the ui)rightness of his mind in taking this political atti- 
tude. When the strifes of present parties are over, history 
will do him justice on this point. 

It shows the moral power of a great civilian out of 
office in America, that this man's all but silent example 
exercised so much influence on this national question. 
Two powers defeated John C. Fremont : moral power and 
money power. The latter was not necessarily corruptly 
exercised, but invisibly, by a thousand channels, Cajjital 
baffled his partisans ; the former was the immense prestige 
of a few men of signal intellectual position, formerly 
Whigs, who threw their moral weight into the hostile 
side of the great balances. Of all these, I think Rufus 
Choate's name and fame stood foremost. It was as effect- 
ive as it was illustrious ; and that effect shows his real 
power. 

Singular in his death as in his life, he went away to 
breathe his last breath comparatively alone with his 
thoughts and his soliloquies. There was in this a poetic 
consistency with his life. For although for ever in the 
midst of his clients or his household, he always seemed 
lonely and solitary. My impression is that when he went 
away he never exjjected to come back, but that he antici- 
pated dying in a more distant and genial clime than the 
one where his death-bed proved to be. 



78 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Sixty years was the span of his life, but when we think 
not how long, but lioiv much he lived, it was not a short 
life. Every hour of his existence was full of thoughts and 
pictures, and an inner life of vast variety and beauty. Ex- 
cept when he was in the tumult of a trial at the Bar, the 
outer world was not his world. Deep and far in the re- 
cesses of his brain he was ever revolving the scenery of the 
world's great days, and the thoughts and faces of memor- 
able men. Start him upon a conversation, at any time, 
about any personage of splendor in history and you would 
find he knew him and talked of him, as promptly and en- 
thusiastically, as if he were still flesh and blood. Among 
the illustrious men of antiquity, he had many friends ; and 
he seemed to feel as jealous for their honor and as prompt 
to resent unjust criticisms upon them, as if he had met 
them, that very day, at dinner. If you looked at him, in 
one point of view, you would say he was New England 
born, and New England bred ; if you looked at him in 
another and more general aspect, you would pronounce him 
Grecian to the back bone. Perhaps the true foiTaula for 
his description would be to say, that he was a sort of cross 
between the Greek and the Yankee civilizations. 

To any student of mankind it must have been a great 
satisfaction to have seen him ; for there is nobody exactly 
like him on the earth, and it may be said without exag- 
geration, that his singular and paradoxical genius, cliar- 
acter and person have given a new tyj)e of man to our 
modern civilization. 



en APTEU III. 

PERSONAL IlEMINISCENCES. 

Mr. Choate, at the time I was a student in liis office, 
was rather a tall and full-sized man, and looked worn but 
sturdy and nmscular. He was strongly built ; with big 
bones, broad shoulders, large feet and bony hands, and of 
a tough fiber in his general physique. More than this, he 
had the nervous bihous temperament, the temperament 
for hard work as well as l)villiant work. His chest was 
wide and powerful. And his thjating hair, which is in 
some degi-ec a test of a strong constitution, resisted all the 
inflammation of his busy l)rain, and remained to the last 
finnly set. It was always black and hardly tinged at all 
with th<js(> gray hues which have been aptly called the 
wliite flag of truce which old age hangs out to the hatreds 
of life. He was a very strong man, capable of vast fatigue 
and endurance. From his frequent sick headaches and the 
look of his fatigued face, many supposed him physically a 
feeble man. He was very iiir from feeble. It was not 
feebleness, but immense over-work which continually wore 
him down. 

He had no recreation for his brain but change of labors. 
He walked daily with great vigor out of the town or round 
Boston Common ; but his mind was at work all the time. 
Those who met him in the gi^ay of the morning would see 
his lips moving, and his features working, as though even 
then he were ejaculating and recalling thoughts. Some- 



80 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

times he earned a book of poetry witli him, to cheer and 
foralize his mind for the day of dry law before him. 

I think he prefeiTed to imagine nature, rather than to 
observe her. He would rather, if he were walking in syl- 
van scenery, read about other ai'cadian groves than to look 
around him critically. He had no fancy for game or sport 
of any kind. Horses he knew nothing of practically, and 
was as indifferent to a blood-mare of Arab stock as if she 
had been a cart horse from Washington street or an omni- 
bus horse from Broadway. I recollect showing him some 
good horses, in the stable, upon an occasion of his dining 
with me out of town ; and pointing out to him many 
stable improvements recently introduced. He stared va- 
cantly round upon the stalls and harnesses without the 
least curiosity or interest, and got back into the house as 
soon as he could. In driving him home in a little wagon, 
the horse broke into a fast trot ; Mr. Choate instantly put 
out his hand, and said with most deliberate emphasis, " I 
want you to drive me as slowly and as carefully as if I 
were a Methodist minister going to meeting." 

Books were his pastime, and books only. In them he 
literally lived, moved and had his being. His library was 
his home. His authors were the loves of his life. Men, he 
was kind to, but I do not think he trusted men much. But 
his books he believed in, with all his soul. He told me 
that it was a gi'cat pastime to him, simply to pull them 
down and put them up, and rearrange and fuss over them. 
He cherished rare editions. He bought books, till every 
inch of space on the walls of his long library was filled, 
and he said he must put the rest under his bed. He had 
in his library some eight thousand volumes. Many vol- 
umes of engravings and j^lates also, he accumulated ; for 
his love of the beautiful was not so much a blood love, as 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 81 

it was an intellectual love. He said, pictures, heads and 
scenes enlivened and cultivated one's fancy. These books 
were bought not to be looked at but to be read. He grasped 
the thoughts of a book like lightning ; and he was for ever 
readino-. He read while walking. He read while at his 
meals. He was at one time so lame as to be unable to 
walk to and from Court, but he had his carnage seat half 
covered with books, which he consumed as he rode. How 
he loved his library and his books, and what consolation he 
found there and in them, may best be gathered from the 
following extract from his beautiful address at the opening 
of the Peabody Institute at Danvers, Massachusetts. " Let 
the case of a busy lawyer testify to the jmceless value of 
the love of reading. He comes home, his temples throb- 
bing, his nerves shattered from a trial of a week ; surprised 
and alarmed by the charge of the judge, and jiale witli 
anxiety about the verdict of the next morning ; not at all 
satisfied with what he has done himself, though he does not 
see how he could have improved it ; recalling with dread 
and self disparagement, if not with envy, the brilliant 
effort of his antagonist, and tormenting himself with the 
vain wish that he could have replied to it — and altogether 
a very miserable subject, and in as unfavorable a condition 
to accept comfort from wife and children as poor Christian 
in the first three pages of Pilgrim's Progress. With a 
sui)erhuman effort he opens his book, and in the twinkling 
of an eye he is looking into the full ' orb of Homeric and 
Miltonic song,' or Pope or Horace laughs him into good 
humor," etc. He told me that in his youth he had fre- 
quently read inspiring sentences of ambition and splendor 
in literature which made him burn all over, or, as he 
quaintly expressed it, "they made me have goose flesh all 
down my back." 



82 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

He read every thing, not only new issues, but the Old 
Masters of discourse and thinking. Bacon, Burke, the 
Bible, Milton, Pope ; and of the ancients, Plato and De- 
mosthenes, Tacitus and Cicero. These he knew and never 
dropped them. Their thoughts and phrases sparkled for 
ever on his tongue. He told me he learned some poetry 
every day of his life. In the conversations which are 
detailed in this book, it may be seen clearly who his ac- 
quaintances and friends in literature were, and how inti- 
mately he knew them. 

Cicero, especially, was his idolatry as a man, an orator 
and a writer. He said Demosthenes was the greater ora- 
tor, but he never spoke of Demosthenes with that tone of 
affection he would express toward Cicero. Hereafter in 
this book will be found a fond defense of Cicero dictated to 
me by him. He said, nothing made him fret more than the 
modern German attacks on Cicero as a pusillanimous trim- 
mer. He said he wanted to set Cicero right before the 
world; "however," he added, " there is only one man in 
the world whom I would care very much to set right about 
him — that is 3Iacaulay." I never saw him so moved about 
any attack upon himself as he was by the New York Tri- 
bune's disparagement of Cicero, in criticising h,is own lec- 
ture on Kevolutionary Orators. For Tully, he had indeed 
a loyal and a lyric enthusiasm. 

He took the Valedictory Address at his College, and 
starting in life with a very fair classical education, he sus- 
tained and added to it during all his career. Mr. Webster 
once expressed to a friend, in my hearing, his amazement 
at the scholarship of a man so busy in life. " Why," said 
he, " Choate reads his classics every day," and so he did — 
Greek and Latin both. During the last few years of his 
life, he even perfected his knowledge of German. " All the 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CROAT E. 83 

new and daring thoiigkt and speculation," said he to me, 
" is in the Grerman mind." Therefore he studied it. 

Although he had no fancy for mechanical employments, 
and had literally no Yankee knack with his hands, yet he 
liked to read about mechanical movements and physical 
objects. He cared nothing for soldiership, but he liked to 
read about armies and strategy. Indeed, there was very 
little in the world that he did not like to sec, there was still 
less in the world that he did not care to read about. A 
prominent Counselor of the New England Bar, of lettered 
accomplishment, once said, " Choate is omniscient. I 
thought I must know more about one subject than he did 
— the naval battles of the last war with England ; but no : 
he convinced me of my errors, and demonstrated them by 
showing me what the evolutions of the ships must have 
been." 

I met him once walking, and after the first salute was 
over, said he, " I was just recalling that fine sweeping sen- 
tence with which Southey closes his life of Admiral Nel- 
son, ' That joy, that consolation, that triumph was his.' 
It is," he added, " fine, and a beautiful climax." It was 
a summer's afternoon, a sky gleaming with golden and 
snowy clouds, blue waters laughing in the sunlight, but 
Choate did not notice sky, cloud, or water ; his thoughts 
were on the printed pages of his beloved books. 

It is thus apparent, from this whole view of him, how 
deprived of recreation his mental faculties were. And so it 
can be inferred what the strength of a constitution must 
ha,ve been, which could keep in play and tolerant of such 
toil, for sixty long years. Recently two of the most inti' 
mate of his rivals at the Bar, remarked to me, without 
knowing that the other had said it, that Choate's vigor of 
muscle and nerve, and whole physique, was prodigious. He 



84 R E M r N 1 S C E N C E S OF R U F U S C H O A T E . 

told me himself, that he could work on in Com-t, day after 
day for weeks, if he could only have his evenings free for 
rest. 

And so he did work — work for forty years, and died at 
last of an ac\ite disease, not even then worn out. I have 
in my jiossession a very interesting manuscript book of his, 
written in 1830, about five years after he was admitted to 
the Bar, which illustrates the diversified detail of his intel- 
lectual toil. On the first page it reads thus : 

" November 4, 1830. 

"faciundo ad munus nuper impositum. 

"1. Memory, Ambulo, Daily Food, and Correspond- 
ence ; Voice, manner ; exercitationes diurnce. 

"2. Current Politics in papers ; 1. Cum notulis — daily 
— Geog. ; 2. Annual Reg'rs. — Past Intelligencers. 

"3. District S. E., Pop., Occs., Modes of living, Com- 
merce, Treaties, and principles on which it de- 
pends. 

" 4. Civil history of U. States. 

"5. Examination of pending questions — Tariff", Pub. 
Lands, Indians, Nullification. 

" 6. American and British Eloquence, Writing and 
Practice." 

This was the scheme of daily private toils of the man 
who had more legal business on his hands than any other 
youth in Essex county. Accordingly his manuscript goes on 
with a most minute and exhaustive analvsis and digest of 
a multitude of fiicts, Presidents' messages, statistics of 
trade, etc., bearing upon the topics above mentioned. If 
such was the labor of youth, what must manhood have 
been in its industry ? Peoj)le who heard Mr. Choate in an 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 85 

evening on a platform, did not make allowance for liis hav- 
ing been jaded all day in Court, and com])ared his perform- 
ances with those who came fresh from their libraries and 
their sleep. Could he ever have rested from professional 
toil, his public performances would have been, far more 
effective. 

The only chronic trouble of his health was very acute 
sick headache. These were so violent as to prostrate him. 
" However," said he one day, when he was rubbing his fore- 
head to a blister for his pain, " I've had these confounded 
thingf? so long, I should be scared into my grave if they 
shoidd suddenly stop attacking me." Sometimes he could 
fio-ht them off, but more often he surrendered at discretion 
and went home. 

I am anxious to correct this impression that Mr. Choate 
was in any degree a sickly or feeble man physically. His 
greatness was, in his physical energies, quite as much as it 
was in his intellectual energies. In his youth, Avhen unde- 
veloped, he was feeble, and anticipated an early death, but 
in his manhood he was mighty in force and stature. Say 
what we may about the will conquering the body, will can 
not create a body ; and sick men do not do the work of this 
world. Erskine boasted that for twenty years he had never 
been kept a day from court by ill health ; and Curran 
could rise before a jury after a session of sixteen Jiours, 
with only twenty minutes' intermission, and make one of 
the most memorable arguments of his life. 

In his manners and personal address, Mr. Choate was 
always uncouth. He had no grace of action. In a social 
or set dress party he was a forlorn looking man. 

Mr. Choate never seemed to me what would be called a 
believins: man — a man of faith. He believed in what he saw 
and in Euclid. Beyond that was the field of doubt and ad- 



86 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

vocacy. And the moment that field was entered, his intel- 
lect of Grecian subtlety saw too many arguments on both 
sides for unshaken confidence in any thing. The remarks 
of his minister at his funeral, however, would indicate that 
he accepted the Christian religion. But when a proof was 
sent him of a great work on " The Doctrine of the Im- 
mortal Life," he thanked its author, in reply, for his work 
on " this grand, sai suhjcct of the immortality I ' 

His long and bnely walks were a decided feature in 
his life. He never, during my time of observation of him, 
walked habitually with anybody, except his brother-in- 
law, Mr. Bell. After Mr. Bell's death he walked alone. 
These walks he took early in the morning, in order to be 
certain to gain his daily amount of exercise before the busi- 
ness of the day involved him inextricably. I told him once 
that walking before breakfast was exhausting to most peo- 
ple, and I had found it so myself. " You did not give it a 
long enough trial then," said he. " You may depend uj)on 
it it works well." 

He used, in later years, to have a little apparatus for 
making tea in his study in the morning ; and rising before 
daylight, in the winter, he would make his OAvn cup of tea, 
and work regularly an hour or two at his law before break- 
fast. He rose early and went to bed very early. He thought 
the early morning the true time for work, though he told 
me, when in his ofiice, " Don't be afraid of study. When 
I was your age, I studied till two o'clock in the morning." 

He had a queer theory about his walking. It was that 
exercise did one no good unless there was j^'^rspiration ; and 
in proportion to the perspiration was the benefit. If this 
was true, he ought to have lived a thousand years ; for no 
speaker in our courts ever exhibited more perspiration in 
the midst of his inspiration than he did. 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS C II GATE. 87 

He was never, within my knowledge, a social man, or 
in the least inclined to conviviality. For dinners he cared 
nothing, though if there was intellect present, he liked the 
good talk. But although I have dined with him alone at 
his own house, in the absence of his family, and have seen 
him again surrounded by his household, and have met him 
at other dinner tables, I never saw in him any of that super- 
ficial good fellowshij) of the table which good cheer and 
good wine generate. He was not, indeed, a lover of good 
living. He rarely indulged beyond a glass or two of wine, 
though sometimes he would drink strong brandy. He said 
to me one day at a dinner, " Webster never liked pale 
sherry ; he said it was a weak invention of the enemy. He 
went for hroivn sherry; and I like it better myself." After-, 
wards he observed, " Hot water and tea are the best stimu- 
lants for a speaker ; they leave no sting behind. But if 
one must use wine, sherry is the best of all wines." 

His humor, so notorious, was a purely intellectual 
humor. It was not the overflow, in any degree, of animal 
spirits. It was all the sparkle and bubble of a mind for 
ever in full play. Though he was always saying something 
laughable when at leisure, even at his own table and every- 
where, yet the fun was rather in the intellectual linking of 
ideas very distant from each other than it was intrinsic, 
though he often was truly witty. Thus a friend, meeting 
him one ten-degrees-below-zero morning, in the winter, 
said : " How cold it is Mr. Choate \" " Well it is not ab- 
solutely tropical," he replied, with a most mirthful em- 
phasis. Mr. Choate's body sometimes got tired ; his mind, 
so far as I could see, never. 

With all his energy, he was never a profane man. He 
would sometimes swear when no other ferocious word pre- 
sented itself to express the instant passion of his feeling, 



8S TvEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

but usually he had expletives in vast variety, for both 
energy and adjuration. These Avere very queer. "I'm 
perfectly flabbergasted" was one of his odd expressions ; 
and, again, " I'll eat all the snakes in Virginny if I don't 
do it." 

He would talk himself, in conversation, into a great 
heat in five minutes, without any intention to do it. I 
have known him to be lounging on his sofa in his library, 
and getting interested in what he was talking about to me, 
he would get up and come at me with the vehemence of a 
full charge on the jury. 

His bust, by Brackett, shows the back of his head, the 
propelling and animal faculties, as not largely developed. 
Indeed, I always thought he showed very little animal 
energy in his speaking, except the spasmodic, muscular 
and nervous energy which was the result of his will. This 
theory was confirmed to my mind by seeing him often 
make a tremendous shout, accompanied with a shattering 
spasm of physical emphasis upon an insignificant sentence 
or word, by the thought of which his mind could not have 
been in any degree enlivened. This tended to show that 
the ardor was will, not impulse. 

His forehead was not high, but wide ; and at the base 
it was prominent and looked worn by hard thinking. 
Either he had the faculty, which some possess, of moving 
the scalp at will, or else his mere excitement could set his 
hair on end ; for in his fits of forensic fury, as he spoke, 
his forehead seemed to lift, his temjdes to dilate, his hair 
to stand higher, and he looked of loftier brow than before. 

It was a noticeable peculiarity of his conformation that 
his large ears were set very far back on his head, and very 
close together. One of his sons-in-law remarked to me, 
that in observing him he had often thought if he could run 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 89 

a knitting needle straight through from one ear to the 
other, it would touch both. 

But though his head was rather narrow than otherwise, 
it got size and strength from its depth. From brow to 
back it was very long. I have heard it compared in this 
regard, by one who knew the cast of both heads, to that of 
the poet Bryant. 

His bloodless cheeks were stretched tensely on the bones, 
as if every film of unnecessary flesh had long since worn 
away. His eyes were like dark avenues, at the bottom of 
which was a great liglit. Weary or at rest, their dark 
radiance beamed unquenchable. His chin was not mass- 
ive, but delicate ; and in his moments of excited pathos it 
quivered in unison with every tearful tone. His complex- 
ion, in which so nuich impression of power may reside, was 
of Norman, not Saxon stamp. It spoke the French fire ; 
for in his impulse he was hot, reckless, dashing as the 
Zouave of Napoleon. But his fire was chiefly in blood : 
his brain was cool. No impulse ever swept him out of 
sight of his land-marks. He could put his finger on the 
right point in his chart at any moment. 

But although his complexion was far from light, he 
could make it look of an ashy paleness. It was said of the 
first Napoleon that he had the art of withdrawing all lus- 
ter from his eyes ; Choate had the power of withdrawing 
all color from his cheeks. In the climax of some pealing 
passage he would turn round from his jury, facing the 
crowd within the Bar, with eyes blazing like a wild man 
of the desert, and his cheeks blanched like white marble. 
At such moments he would fix his glaring look on some 
face he happened to encounter, and for two or three sec- 
onds, seem to pour a stream of fire from his eyes into 
theirs. Mr. Everett, in allusion doubtless to the pretur- 



90 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

natural intensity of this look, spoke, in liis Faneuil Hall 
eulogy, of the "unearthly glance of his eye." Light faces 
exhibit variety of expression best, hut dark faces are the 
best background for passion, Choate's face had no great 
variety. But those who sat in front of him, saw as he 
sj)oke that his eyes grew blacker, and his cheeks whiter, to 
the close of his climaxes. 

It was sometimes said, that though eminently hand- 
some in his youth, he became homely. To this the reply 
was, that this might be so, but, at any rate, he was the 
handsomest homely man in the world. Perhaps this re- 
mark may help to convey some notion of his appearance. 
The deep-sunken lines of weary thought seamed his strong 
face ; the prominent eye-brows, the contorted lips, thin in 
themselves, but thick in their doubling folds, and the wasted 
cheeks ; these, while they marked the cruel siege of time 
upon the beauty of his boyhood, could not obliterate the 
frame-work of his comeliness, nor mask the fires of genius 
within, which shone and captivated through every instru- 
ment of expression. 

It was in 1848 that Mr. Choate took me into his office. 
He had previously given constant aid and direction both 
in the collegiate and the professional course of my study. 
Mr. Crowninshield was his office partner at the time ; and 
the offices being small, there was some difficulty in taking 
another student, there being one in the office already, and 
I believe the partners had once positively resolved never 
to have another student. 

Although no student could be of much if any use to him, 
— ^from the character of his business, which was all worked 
over by his juniors in their cases, — yet Mr. Choate inter- 
ested himself, with his unfailing kindness, to arrange mat- 
ters with his partner, and to adjust his office, to gratify 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 91 

me by making a place there, I shall never forget the morn- 
ing when, after a week of delay and doubt, he sent for me to 
his house, and said, extending his hand, " I was resolved 
to accomplish it : you are a student in my office from this 
hour." 

It may be remarked in passing that it was the worst 
office for practical good to a student at law in all Boston, 
for there was hardly any elementary business done there. 
It was mostly great business, and in its ultimate stages of 
progress before it was brought to him. And as for any 
personal instruction from the chief himself, he had hardly 
time to see or speak to a student from January to Decem- 
ber. From my personal relations with him, I was fortu- 
nate in picking up many scraps of advice from him ; but 
I imagine that generally his students were sadly disap- 
pointed, if they expected to feel the sunshine of his in- 
structions upon their legal pathway. So far from this, he 
did not know, sometimes, w^ho his students were. And I 
think I learned more about practical, every-day Law, the 
Revised Statutes, and making Writs, from his young son- 
in-law, whom he took into partnership while I was in the 
office, -than from all he himself ever said to me. Choate 
was for wide and profound courses of study. He put me to 
reading the Roman Civil Law, the Institutes of Justinian, 
the German Commentators, and heaven knows what else ! 
But his youthful partner flew lower, and the humbler flight 
was of much more practical service. Until he came there 
I do not think I ever saw a Writ, or a copy of the Revised 
Statutes. 

His office, at first, was the well-known No. 4 Court 
street — an Entry long famous for its influence in the days 
of the old Whig party. It used to be said that all the 
Grovernors and Senators of the commonwealth were made 



92 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

in a back parlor in Beacon street, and up stairs in No. 4 
Court street. Charles Sumner had his office there on the 
same floor with Mr. Choate, and George Hillard, and other 
luminaries of the dominant party, as they were then. 

Mr. Choate would always shut the door between his two 
offices, shutting himself up in his inner sanctum, and there 
untiringly he worked, worked, worked. He had his pen 
in his hand always. It was his weapon of warfare. He 
had a high stand-up desk, and in front of it a queer high 
chair, made so that a person could slightly sit upon it while 
yet standing ii[) ; probably something like the contrivance 
on which Queen Victoria half sits and half leans upon the 
royal reception days. Screwed up on to this pyramidal 
chair, with his feet on the ground, he was always to be 
seen pulHng over sheets of manuscript and making notes 
from law books. There was a table in the office, but I 
never once saw him sit down to it. He never sat down 
anywhere if he could conveniently help it. He always 
stood up or lay down. Accordingly, he was much oftener 
on the sofa in his office, than in a chair. I believe this 
was on account of some peculiar physical effect which long 
sitting produced upon him. When he was not in court 
trying a case, he was a fixture at his desk with pigeon- 
holes full of papers in front of it, and a broad background 
of the books in buff behind him. Nothing distracted him 
from these labors, but business, or a talk about books, or 
some philosophical or historic theme. Start him on any 
such topic, and, if not extremely busy, he would turn right 
round from his law, pen in hand, and commence talking 
on it with as much fullness and readiness as if he had been 
elaborating it for a week. 

I recollect particularly, one afternoon, saying some- 
thing to him upon Alexander the Great. He immerliately 



REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 93 

launched out into a brilliant disquisition upon the Man of 
Macedon ; describing the magnitude of his ideas, his Gre- 
cian nationality, his Asiatic scheme of empire, his inevit- 
able destiny, Grote's history, etc., in a manner erudite and 
interesting enough for a crammed, lecture in a popular his- 
torical course. 

If he ever paused to say any thing not on business or 
books, it was something witty, or mirthful. Nothing oc- 
curred, no odd person came in, no peculiar thing was said, 
that the laagh did not echo after it from some curious ob- 
servation of Mr. Choate upon it. 

Sometimes when nobody said any thing suggestive of a 
joke, he would perpetrate something on his own account. 
One day he came stalking out of his inner office into the 
outer one, and, looking across the street, his eye caught 
sight of a bird-fancier's establishment ojjposite. " Why," 
said he, " I did n't know we were Hanked by nightingale's 
nests." Any student of his was always delighted to do 
any thing in his power for him. In a hot summer's day I 
remember running all over Court street and the lawyers' 
quarters, with messages, to get him ready to go to New 
York that afternoon. And he made me feel more than re- 
paid by the kindly word of thanks he expressed, not in the 
ordinary formal way, but by saying, as he rubbed his tan- 
gled head, " You are a great comfort to me." 

I never remember seeing him collect any money, or 
make any charges in any books. Indeed, I never saw any 
account books in his office. He himself never seemed to 
have any money. If he wanted any, he would get me to 
draw a check for him, even for five dollars, and he signed 
it. If he drew the check himself, he made sad work of it. 
It used to be said round the Entry, that when he had to go 
tu Washington to argue cases, or to Congress, he often was 



94 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

obliged to ransack the Entry to find some one witli money 
to lend him to go on with. Unlike some others of the 
fraternity of great men, however, he very often paid what 
he borrowed. 

His accounts of who owed him and how much, he 
must have chiefly carried in his head. His* office part- 
ner could not have known them, and there was not 
seen there any book of original entries. One of his 
old students of former years, however, used to come 
in to us and tell the story of a traditionary set of 
books which Clioate commenced with the intention of 
keeping them by double entry. So, on the first day he 
opened them, he had occasion to send out for a gallon 
of oil — it was before gas days ; accordingly he entered 
in the bulky volume, " Office debtor one gallon of oil," 
so much. A few days after, an old client came in and 
asked for his bill. Choate told him he really was very 
busy and if he'd call again in a week he'd have it ready for 
him. In a week he called a2;ain and demanded his bill. 
" 0, yes," said Choate, "I really, — you must pardon me, 
— but I've not had time to draw it off ; but you may pay 
whatever you think right." This did not suit the client, 
who said he'd call once more ; and so he did a fortnight 
after. This time Choate was in despair. " Well there," 
said he, " take the Books and just draw off a minute of the 
account yourself." The worthy man took the Book, de- 
spairing of any other information, opened it, and there at 
the top of the page, in staring characters of vast size to 
make them legible, was the entry, "Office debtor one gallon 
of oil," — standing as lonely on the page as its author in his 
life. He never asked for his bill again, but j)aid what 
he thought fair, and asked for a receipt in full, which Mr. 
Choate promised to have ready for him, next time he called. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 95 

Mr. Clioate very often, however, made a sudden foray 
and raid upon his clients as he happened to recollect them, 
if he found himself unexpectedly in want of money. And 
woe he to any unfortunate man then, who had a heavy case 
actually on trial. He had to jjay for all the sins of omis- 
sion of his predecessor clients for many weeks. 

There was a great joke wandering round State street for 
a long time, in the shape of a promissory note payable on 
demand, drawn by Webster and endorsed by Choate. It 
was shaved again and as-ain at the most fiuctuatins; rates. 

All this was his way of doing things in '47, and from 
that time till he took in his son-in-law as Partner. Then 
all was changed. And I used to console myself with the 
reflection, tliat now he would be fully able to obtain and 
enjoy a well deserved competence. 

It was, however, a singular paradox that his scale of 
charges in liis mind, his ideal of a professional account, was 
rather high than low. If he named any charge, he named 
a pretty fair, though never extravagant one. I think as he 
grew older, he was somewhat talked into i)utting a proper 
estimate on his own services. Sometimes liis want of dis- 
crimination in this regard operated hardly. One day, a 
poor fellow from Charlestown, who had a snug trifle accu- 
mulated by daily labor, came in with his Tax Bill, " to 
consult EufiLS Choate" as to whether it was rightly levied 
or not. Choate turned him over to me, at the same time 
vaguely indicating the principle and authority which must 
be looked up. Occupied in trying a large case, he did not 
come back to the office for two or three days. Meantime, 
I had brooded laboriously over this almost the first profes- 
sional matter ever entrusted to my hands. The " opinion 
of Rufus Choate" was elaborately prepared by me, and 
when at last he did come back to his office, I presented it to 



96 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

liim for his scrutiny and signature. He looked it over, and 
scrawled his autograph at the bottom. "What shall I tell 
him is your charge, Mr. Choate" was my next inquiry. 
"Well,'' said he, " I think we ought to have $25 for that, 
don't you ?" Of course I acquiesced, though it seemed to 
me then a fabulous sum on so trifling a matter, for the 
whole Tax Bill was only $10. When the client came, I 
presented him the " opinion," and told him the charge. 
"Twenty-five dollars !" he exclaimed, "why I think that's 
too much ! I haven't got but $15 ready money in the 
world." Of course he was let off on payment of the $15, 
but not without much misgiving on my part, lest the mas- 
ter of the office would be displeased. When Mr. C. came 
in, 1 hastened to tell him that I had given the Charles- 
town man his opinion ; and then 1 waited anxiously for 
what, in my ignorance of him, I supposed would be his 
inevitable question, " Did you give him the Bill ?" But 
no such question came, or would have come to the day of 
judgment. So, in a moment, during which the whole sub- 
ject seemed to pass away from his mind, I ventured tim- 
idly to suggest that I couldn't collect the Bill. " Ah !" 
was the only reply. "No," said I, "the man said he hadn't 
got but $15 in the world, and he paid that." " Oh," said 
Choate, with a rich smile mantling over the lower part of 
his face " you took all he had, did you ? Well, I've noth- 
ing to say to that — that's strictly professional." It need 
hardly be added that he himself neither saw nor asked for 
a dollar of the money. It was divided between the students 
in the office. 

In the last year of his life, when a cause in Dedham 
had been dismissed, he argued a motion for allowing his 
legal costs. This was resisted, on the ground that the 
court had no longer any jurisdiction over the case or any 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 97 

thing connected with it. Choate, in reply, speaking very 
slowly, said, " The construction of my brother can not 
prevail. We must have our costs now or never. If we 
should apply to the court to be allowed them before the 
final adjudication, your honor would say to us, paternally, 
' Wait till your cause is done !' The truth is, we lawyers 
have, in the progress of the case, a few fees, a little re- 
freshment by the way, but we wait till all is over for the 
full banquet." The court gi-anted his motion. 

Although liis office was littered with books, papers, 
blanks, speeches and antique debris of every thing profes- 
sional, yet he had a decided aversion to any thing bare 
or hard-looking in or about it. A small place in the wall 
was uncovered by the removal of a book-case. He took 
pains carefully to hang up a map there • to hide its naked- 
ness. The old carpet, which liad probably not been 
changed since he came to Boston, now began to give signs, 
too palpable for misconstruction, of decay. He asked me 
to " indicate what sort of one I preferred." I suggested 
an oil-cloth carpet of pretty pattern. " Oh no," said he, 
" it's too cold a material. I'd rather walk on mai'ble than 
oil-cloth." The discussion ended, I believe, by his lea-sang 
the whole matter to the colored woman who cleaned the 
office, and a glaring red carpet soon stared us in the face 
as the result. However, it was thick and felt warm, and 
looked coarsely rich, and he was apparently entirely satis- 
fied. But observing that a place hidden in a corner was 
uncovered by carpeting, he was not satisfied till it was 
covered. 

When he could do so without displeasing anybody 
amono; the various attaches of his office, he would shut 
himself up alone in his inner room. He always preferred 
to be thus alone. But if a student happened to be in 

5 



98 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

there, it must be a very stringent necessity that could drive 
him to intimate, personally, his desire for his exit. 

It was very amusing sometimes to hear him converse 
with strangers who brought new cases to him. His lan- 
guage of advice was often so uncommon. Once, as he was 
lying on a sofa, I heard him dismiss a worthy mechanic, 
who had brought a trifling matter to him, with the direc- 
tion. " Well, so home now, and recoimoiter the whole 
scene, the persons and all, and come and tell me the re- 
sult of your observation." The good man went home, but 
whether he ever knew how to " reconnoiter or not we never 
heard. 

Mr. Choate was stubbornly regular at his office when 
not in court. No weather and no sickness but the most 
severe sick headaches kept him away. It was always a 
dull day with us in his office when he did not come. He 
seemed, although he said so little, to bring so much light 
and glory and history with him when his dark face and 
bright smile looked cheeringly down upon us over that 
hio'h yellow desk. Even if he was too unwell to be up, he 
would come to the office and would lie on his sofa and ad- 
vise Avith clients. 

One morning, he came up from Plymouth, where he had 
been making a political speech, and entered the office, look- 
ing as if just up from his grave instead of his bed. He threw 
himself on his sofa, and lay there studying and talking to 
clients all the morning. I asked him how he got along in 
his speech. " Got along ?" said he ; " I didn't get along 
at all. I told 'em all I knew, for more than an hour, and 
I might as well have talked to the dead." 

Daniel Webster used to come into the office sometimes 
to see and consult with Choate. He would come stalking 
in heavily, like a great three-decker surging into harbor. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 99 

It was very interesting to see them meet thus in an office. 
Choate told me, more than once, he thought Webster the 
greatest lawyer in the world. 

He used to get up sudden enthusiasms for various au- 
thors, and sets of authors. I could always tell by his acci- 
dental remarks during a day what course his last literary 
impulse had taken. One day he came down to the office 
full of Blackwood's Magazine. Said he, " There's a capital 
article in this number, 'Ancient and Modern Oratory.' 
It's got every thing in it. It's all there." A little book 
on Khetoric,by Prof H. N. Day, of Ohio, I also recall as excit- 
ing him to study over that subject again with fresh life. 
These books he at once offered to lend me ; " but," said 
he, " return them when you are done." His books were 
the only things he guarded with care. In the midst of all 
his avocations, if a book borrowed fl-om his private library 
was not returned, he would remember it, and remind the 
borrower of it months after it had been taken. He knew, 
and valued with a special interest, each individual book 
among his thousands. Meeting him one day casually in 
the street, he said, " I've just got a fine edition of Boling- 
broke's works from England. My old set of him I picked 
up from various editions. It's too good to be lost, and I'm 
going to give it to you ;" and then he added, " I might 
give it to Rufus (his son), but I don't believe the little 
devil would prize it much." Accordingly he remembered 
to send it, with an indescribable scrawl on the fly-leaves, 
which I have always presumed was the name of the giver 
and receiver of the volumes. 

One of his great recreations was, on Saturday after- 
noon, when the courts were all silent, to lounge into Bilrn- 
ham's famous antique bookstore, and spend hours in glanc- 
ing over and glancing through the multitudinous seas of 



100 REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

books imprisoned there. This habit was not confined to 
Boston in its exercise. A well-known dealer in old books 
in New York has said since Mr. Choate's death : " The 
great lawyer was accustomed, when he visited New York, 
to spend hours among my books." One occasion he particu- 
larly recalls thus : " About ten years ago, while on a visit 
or passing through this city, Mr. Choate called at my store 
about ten o'clock, a. m., and introduced hiinself as a lover 
of books and an occasional buyer, and then desired me to 
show him where the metaphysics, the Greek and Latin 
classics, stood. He immediately commenced his researches 
with great apparent eagerness, nor did he quit his toil till 
he was compelled to do so by the store being shut up ; thus 
having been over nine hours on a stretch without drink or 
food. 

" He remarked that he had quite exhausted himself, 
mentally as well as bodily. He had been greatly inter- 
ested, as well as excited, at what he had seen ; ' for,' con- 
tinued he, ' I have discovered many books that I have never 
seen before, and seen those that I never heard of ; but, 
above all, I have been more than overjoyed at discovering 
in your collection a copy of the Greek bishop's famous com- 
mentary on the Avritings of Homer, in seven volumes, quarto 
— a work that I have long had an intense desire to possess.' 
He afterwards purchased the precious volumes. I had the 
seven volumes bound in three, in handsome and appropri- 
ate style. These works, no doubt, still grace his library. 

" He was very anxious to procure an old school-book, 
which had been a favorite with him when a boy. It was 
a collection of pieces by the best English authors, the title 
of which now I have forgotten. ' The book,' said he, ' was 
put into my hands by my worthy mother, and I must con- 
fess the frequent perusal of it in early years has had much 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 101 

influence over me ever since ; for the reading and reread- 
ing of these pieces was to me a labor of love and devotion. 
Ever since, I have tried to procure a cojDy of this Look but 
never succeeded.' 

" The Greek bisho})'s commentary alluded to was that 
of Eustatius (Archbishop of Thessalonica), who was born 
in the twelfth century, at Constantinople. He was the au- 
thor of the well-known voluminous commentary on Homer, 
written in the same language as the Iliad. His comment- 
aries were first printed at Rome, 1550, in two volumes, 
folio. Besides these commentaries, he was the author of 
several other critical works." 

Mr. Choate loved to read writers of long, swelling, 
stately sentiments, and of ardency. De Quincy he often 
spoke of But, he said, he was something of an old Betty. 
Of the young Scotch writer, Bayne, whose essays had re- 
cently been brought out in Boston, he remarked to me, " I 
read every word of Bayne." 

" Literature," he said again to me, " is full of enthusiasm ; 
life is not." " Ah !" said he once, in a speech before a Legis- 
lative committee at the State House, " Pardon my emotion, 
Mr. Chairman — I was thinking of the days of my youth." 

Like Fisher Ames, he loved to read the Bible in his 
young days and in his manhood. He attended to it care- 
fully at church, and quoted from it constantly in speaking. 
He was never tired of reading the English orators, and 
talking about them. Brougham, he said, was not a real 
orator. Grattan he always spoke of w^ith enthusiasm. 
His speech commencing, "At length I address a new 
country r he thought was his finest. It was delivered 
after the great concessions made to Ireland by England 
in the dav of " The Irish volunteers," which Grattan af- 
firmed emancipated Ireland. 



102 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Mr. Choate said, " Some one should write a History of 
the Ancient Orators. There is no book in all my library 
where I can find all there is exf,ant about any ancient Ora- 
tor." He earnestly advised the author to undertake it. In 
pursuance of the idea, an article on "Hortensius" appeared 
in a Review as a beginning. He spoke with enthusiasm of 
the satisfaction it gave him; saying it was a new revelation 
to him, for he never hieiu Hortensius before. 

He was a thorough reader of the daily newspapers, be- 
sides al] his mass of legal and literary studies. In a mo- 
ment's glance he would seem to take in all the salient points 
of the paper ; and afterwards allusions to its incidents 
would be very likely to appear in his speeches. The news- 
paper topics of trifling but instant interest were quite as 
much relied on by him, in his argumentative illustration, 
as those of erudition and magnificence. 

All his Law seemed to be at his instant and exact com- 
mand. A poor fellow cut up by a railroad collision hob- 
bled in one morning, to sue the Company. Choate said 
instantly, " The poor man can't recover. It has been re- 
cently decided that the employee, situated as this man was, 
has no remedy against his employer. Turn to such a 
volume of the Reports and you'll find it." I looked, and 
there it was exactly as he said. 

After being admitted to the Bar, he often gave me ad- 
vice and assistance on law points. Happening to mention 
to him the first case I ever ventured to carry up from the 
Common Pleas on "exceptions" to the Supreme Court, he 
immediately replied, " Why you ought to get that case. I 
see the j^oint. But the trouble will be to make them (the 
Judges) see it. But your law is clearly right." 

The case had been ruled out of Court twice already, 
and it was therefore the more gratifying to hear his prompt 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 103 

endorsement. When it finally came up for argument in the 
Supreme Court, Mr. Choate's extempore view of the rase was 
ratified. For the exceptions were sustained, and the case 
ordered to be heard again. I remember another, a criminal 
case, where he exhibited the same quick mastery of law in 
conversation. The case was an indictment for putting the 
hand into a pocket with intent to steal. It fell to me, ac- 
cidentally, owing to the sickness of another lawyer. The 
point was taken, that the government must show there was 
something in the pocket, before they could convict ; for 
clearly it was not the defendant's intention to steal, if he 
found notliing in the pocket. Pending the decision of 
this point the Court adjourned for the day ; and I hurried 
to Mr. Choate to ask his opinion. He thought it over for 
a moment or two and then said, " I don't think it will 
stand." He then discussed it pro and con. a few minutes, 
but still concluded " it won't stand." Going back to my 
office and hunting for an "authority" I came upon one re- 
cently decided and published in one of the very last volumes 
of the Reports ; it precisely oveiTuled the very point relied 
upon. 

Here Mr. Choate did not know of the decision, but his 
legal analogies were so accurate in his mind, that without 
"authority," he disposed of a point which certainly seemed 
very plausible. 

It was very difficult for Mr. Choate ever to say " no" to 
anybody. He always said "yes," to all who came. I do 
not doubt he personally intended to do every thing he said 
he would. But the difference between the things he wanted 
to do and those he did not want to do, was not in what he 
said about them ; for he said exactly the same things about 
both ; but it was, that somehow it happened that the lat- 
ter things luouldn't get done. There was the same cordial- 



104 REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE, 

ity in talking about them, the same apparent interested 
intention to do them ; but the latter class of things never 
were done, nevertheless. This involved him in a good deal 
of trouble about engagements, cases, and matters relied 
upon to be finished. 

It was not this facility of acquiescence, however, merely, 
but a higher and kinder motive which often led him to 
take cases of poor and oppressed people whose pay was 
very slim, when he might have had higher jjay from others, 
for less exigent cases. 

I think he had a good deal of taste for the drama. He 
took a refined delight in hearing Fanny Kemble's Kead- 
ings. He promised me he would go to the Boston Theater 
to see Edwin Booth's acting ; and he was often observed 
I^roAvling around the back seats of the Museum to laugh at 
William Warren's irresistible fun. 

He was solicitous about where and how he should 
speak, when the occasion was other than in Court. In 
Court he cared notliing about the arrangement. But he 
more than once sent for me on other occasions, as a friendly 
observer, to advise with him about what Hall he should speak 
in, and other particulars. He knew as well as I did, that 
his rich voice was not ringing and resonant ; and therefore 
he never went into the great Music HaU for his addresses. 
He had a singular reluctance apjiarently, to have any 
of his students or friends go to hear him speak. In the 
first days of my experience of him I suffered from ignor- 
ance of this trait. For when he was expected to speak 
before the Whig Convention at Worcester, I asked him if 
he was going to speak, and where. " Oh, no," he replied, 
" I shall either say nothing or a mere remark or two. I'm 
not going to make any speech." Accordingly I did not go 
up to Worcester, and lost one of his most fervid and inter- 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 105 

esting efforts ; a speech of whicli it was said at the time, 
that in the frenzied energy of his delivery, he literally split 
his coat in two in the back, from collar to waistband. This 
pecidiar reluctance to promote anybody's wish to hear 
him, I think proceeded from unaffected modesty as to his 
own performance. He was always apprehensive before- 
hand as to how he was "going to get along" in any effort. 

The prince of orators, Cicero, said long ago, that he 
never spoke without first trembling, until his own voice re- 
assured him. Probably, this preliminary nervousness in 
really great orators is the pledge, as well as prelude, of 
their success. Mr. Choate, besides this special anxiety, 
had a uniformly humble opinion of his own eloquence. If 
he could avoid it, he would not put himself in competition 
on the same stage, with many a reigning orator whom the 
world thought decidedly inferior to him. 

He might be pardoned for a modest hesitancy to speak 
on the same occasions with Mr. Everett. But it certainly 
was more than suspected at the time, that the sickness 
which caused his absence from the first Webster birthday 
banquet, in Boston, was promoted by the knowledge that 
Edward Everett was to be there in full force. Yet their 
styles of address were so different, that each would have 
been a new and an equal treat. 

When one of his great cases in court was ready for ar- 
gument, I had ensconced myself in a snug corner ; with 
infinite difficulty, as the crowd was great. Just before he 
rose to speak, he spied me out ; beckoning me to him, he 
sent me to the office for a law-book. I knew if I lost the 
seat, it could never be gained again, and I felt sure that 
his main object was not so much the book as to dispense 
with an auditor. So trusting that in the heat of the argu- 
ment, which he was just rising to open, he would forget all 



106 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

about the book and me, I sat still and heard him till the 
intermission. Then, as I ex2)ected, he did not allude to 
the book again, and my opinion as to the motive of his 
sending for it was confirmed. 

Celebrated as he was at twenty-one, and never sub- 
mitting to any probation of unappreciated struggle, it was, 
indeed, surprising that he should have been so free from all 
vanity. He had no personal or intellectual fopperies what- 
ever. The vanities of Erskine and Pinkney were to him 
incomprehensible. I do not believe he ever said a single 
word which could tend directly or indirectly to his own 
laudation. Of self-seeking or self-praise, he was as inno- 
cent as a baby. 

His modest appreciation of his own eloquence did not 
lead him to belittle that of others. He gave them hearty 
praise. The eloquence of Kossuth he often expressed un- 
bounded admiration for. That passage in which the Mag- 
yar paused in his speech, in England, — "Pardon me, I 
thought I saw the thousands of my countrymen pass again 
in review before me, and heard them shout again ' Liberty 
or death' " — this passage he cordially praised as a great 
burst of eloquence. 

He could bear complacently to hear Henry Clay's elo- 
quence jiraised, even though it was in some degree at the 
expense of his own. 

Young Burlingame, he said, has an " eloquent utter- 



ance." 



The article which I wrote upon his Eloquence, and which 
is in this book, was thought by some of his mistaken friends 
to disparage him, because it pronounced him not a " nat- 
ural orator." He himself, however, hastened to assure me, 
in a note which I still have, that he considered it "kind, 
friendly and fully appreciative." 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 107 

It is unfortunate for his posthumous fame that his hand- 
writing was so hieroglyphical. A man might puzzle out the 
autograph of the Egyptians on the face of the Pyramids 
ahnost as easily as Choate's Coptic caligraphy. His stu- 
dents studied it like anv other dead lano-uao-e. While ac- 
tually in his oflEice and with him, I had i)uzzled out his 
alphabet sufficiently to read a good deal of him, hut never 
quite to read all. And after leaving him, the knowledge 
soon escaped so that now his MS. is again a sealed book 
to me. When his letters used to come from Europe, they 
would have to lie by and be referred to at intervals of time 
for days before I could grasp their full sense and words ; 
and then it would often be by running the eye along the 
whole line and taking it in by a sort of guess-work and 
flash, rather than spelling it out accurately. 

When the time of office study was uj), he made the 
motion in the Supreme Court for my admission to the bar, 
and I shall never forget how nervous he was about that 
simple motion. It was a little out of his ordinary beat, 
and he seemed quite flustered as he made the motion in 
open court and stated the particulars to the shaggy-look- 
ing Chief Justice. After it was done, however, he encour- 
aged my spirits and inaugurated the hopes of a new-made 
attorney, by telling me, " You need not fear for business. 
There's always room for one more I" 

When, at last, his office was finally left, there mingled 
with the pleasure of entering upon scenes of real life much 
genuine pain at losing the constant presence of this de- 
lightful man. His greatness and his sweetness were an 
inspiration to all who saw him nearly. 

A friend, who also was a student in Mr. Choate's office, 
but ten years before my time there, has kindly sent me the 



108 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

following reminiscences of Ms student life with him. It 
differs somewhat from my own later observation of him, 
especially as respects his discrimination in cases and fees. 
But it is another and interesting view of him, taken in the 
same office, at the period of his first coming to Boston. 



REMINISCENCES OF ANOTHER STUDENT. 

The first time I saw and heard Mr. Choate was at An- 
dover in the spring of 1835. He was then living in Salem, 
with something of a Congressional reputation, and great 
local celebrity as a lawyer and advocate at the Essex bar. 

Novelties were then rare in Andover, and all the stu- 
dents were on the qui vive to see and hear the legal celebri- 
ties of old Essex. 

The case was before three referees, I think, and was 
about some machinery, of little general interest except to 
the parties. Hon. Leverett Saltonstall was his opponent, 
and a fine lawyer and gentleman of the old school. I well 
remember my first impressions of these two intellectual 
antagonists. Choate, while preparing for his argument, 
was walking across the hall, clad in his favorite brown sur- 
tout — ever and anon thrusting his hands through his raven 
curls, not then tinged with gray. 

Saltonstall seemed to me out of temper, and irritable ; 
although his personal appearance was highly dignified and 
venerable, and his arguments and address able and artistic. 

When opposed to Choate, I have heard that Saltonstall 
was often nervous, excited, almost petulant ; especially be- 
fore the Twelve, with whom his great compeer was always 
omnipotent. 

Saltonstall was like the Austrian general of the old 



IIEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 109 

school, the perfect soldier ; Choate, in his strategy and at- 
tack, had the boldness, the independence, and the impetu- 
osity of the young Zouave. 

Out of the dry bones of his dry case and its surround- 
ings, Choate then and there framed an address which cap- 
tivated a large and most discriminating audience. 

There were many theological students present, gener- 
ally disposed to be critical ; as well as other students in 
classical literature. All were delighted. 

I remember, in this speech, a gorgeous description of 
those Andover sunsets, which have been so often lauded 
by poets and enthusiasts ; but although I have been many 
times thi'illed with these attempts to describe those beau- 
ties of nature, that speech to those referees, in the hall of 
the Andover tavern, stands out above them all. 

Ahnost anybody but Clioate would have broken down 
in the attemj^t to soar on such a pinion in such a case. 
But, at such times, he knew no such word as fail, nor did 
his auditory. 

Our seminary critics, in their judgment upon the ad- 
dress of the eloquent advocate, w^ere united and cordial. 
If there had been any thing of the exaggerated, or florid, 
or bombastic, these men would have been the first to detect 
and condemn. 

I entered Mr. Choate's office as a student in the fall of 
1835, at the old No. 4 Court street. At that time he did 
a large office business. He had a very heavy docket in Es- 
sex, and was absent there attending court two and three 
weeks at a time. There was a good deal of office work for 
the students to do — a good deal of copying. 

I remember the first time I undertook to copy from 
Mr. Choate's manuscript. He had himself drawn off about 
a page in his own inimitable chirography, which he read 



110 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

over to me, and requested me to copy and insert in a Writ. 
It was a " Declaration," I think. He was then leaving 
the office. I got along pretty swimmingly for a few lines, 
but was soon brought up. I worked and worked, but in 
vain. The perspiration fairly ran off from me, in my nerv- 
ous excitement to accomplish this duty. A kind neighbor 
gave me a helping hand in this extremity, and I found 
daylight. The person who gave me this friendly aid in 
deciphering the chirography of Mr. Choate, was Charles 
Sumner. 

Mr. Choate was a careful and accurate pleader ; and I 
always considered him a very neat and skillful conveyancer. 
How could he be otherwise ? With his great knowledge 
of the law, its principles and practice, and with his knowl- 
edge of his own vernacular, so copious and yet so exact, 
you would expect to find accuracy and neatness in all his 
lesral writings. 

During the first few years of his practice in Suffolk, 
his criminal business was large ; and, unlike most of our 
eminent American lawyers, he never wholly dechned re- 
tainers in the criminal courts. But my recollection of 
his habits in these cases is, that he was very particular as 
to what cases he took. From 1835 down, I know that 
while he was as open and free as daylight, to any class of 
clients on almost any respectable class of civil business 
(and too open, and free, and liberal for his own advantage), 
he was very rigid as to his retainers on the criminal side, 
from my earliest knowledge of his habits. The case must 
be a good one, and the retainer $100. If the statistics 
could be procured, they would show that Mr. Choate had 
tried a good many criminal cases in Suffolk, I remember 
now but four capital trials in which he was engaged for the 
prisoner, in Sufiblk. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. Ill 

I had occasion once to ask him in hehalf of a celebrated 
divine, for a reference to some of the best authorities on 
the true province of the advocate in defending prisoners; 
in short, as to the old slander of lawyers defending or pro- 
secuting bad cases. 

In the course of our interview, he said, no better an- 
swer could be given than Dr. Johnson made to Boswell on 
the same subject. " Sir, you do not know that your client 
is guilty until proved so, under the law ;" or something to 

that effect. 

He said that his own experience in criminal cases was 
large, and in the whole course of his practice he never had 
a client who did not persist in declaring his own innocence 
from first to last. He said that his legal preceptor, Judge 
Cummins, who had a large practice in Essex, told him a 
similar experience. The judge, however, had one client, 
who admitted to the judge, his counsel, that he Avas guilty. 
He was tried, defended by the judge and acquitted by the 
direction of the court, on legal grounds. 

What readiness Choate had !— there was no branch of 
law in which he could not readily answer the questions of 
his junior legal friends, or at once refer them to some au- 
thority where the mooted point was discussed. 

He always took a deep interest in discussing legal ques- 
tions with his young friends : and did it cheerfully, copi- 
ously, lovingly. 

How liberal he was with his treasures of learning to his 
professional brethren. His friendly advice was always 
ready, and given without grudge from the affluence of his 
great storehouse. 

And yet what laborious, and careful and plodding prep- 
aration he made in the plainest of cases ! 

When occasion demanded, he was the readiest of men : 



112 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOAT 



E, 



and he undoubtedly did enter U2)on cases without much 
preparation. 

But ordinarily, his preparation was elaborate. He 
loved to exhaust the subject. His respect for the Bench 
led him to make thorough preparation of the law of his 
case : and when his case was for the jury, he remembered 
the twelve who were to pass upon the facts— for he always, 
as he said, luent in for the verdict. 

Hence his preparation of a case was generally thor- 
ough. 

I have known him hold two consultations with his 
junior, preparatory to a hearing in the Probate Court on 
some motion for a new bond ; and I have known him 
equally elaborate on a motion to amend some interlocutory 
decree in the Superior Court. 

Those who have been his juniors" in the preiDaration and 
trial of causes, Avill remember how he made them work. 

His favorite book on Evidence was Phillips (Hill and 
Cowen's edition). It is generally admitted that there is 
almost every thing in that copious and valuable but cum- 
brous and ill-arranged book ; but a good many inquirers 
have difficulty in finding what they want there. 

Choate had a way I always marveled at, of putting his 
finger right upon the matter he wanted in Phillips. 

His preparation of his briefs for arguing a case to the 
jury in the progress of a cause was marvelous. 

His minutes of evidence were always fully taken by him- 
self in those goose-track characters infinitely more illegible 
than the cramped piece of penmanship of Tony Lumpkin. 
But in addition to these notes of the evidence which he 
was taking with such minuteness, and simultaneously, ho 
was jotting down his closing speech to the jury — word for 
word, and figure for figure — when the occasion required it. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 113 

His brief, for addressing the jury, was. full — ^very ; — il- 
lustrations, etc., all written out. But in his speech he rarely 
looked at a writing. It has occurred to me, that the mere 
act of putting upon paper his thoughts stamped them 
upon his memory. 

Those copious notes of the evidence which he took, on 
the trial of a cause, I have sometimes thought were for the 
information of court and jury, and not to aid himself He 
forsrot nothinir which was said, and no incident that took 
j)lace at the trial. 

With the jury, I tliink, no lawyer of our country was 
more successful. 

His i)Ower over them was in his eloquence, in thorough 
knowledge of his case, in an able presentation of it, and in 
defending it against attack. 

His power over juries was fair and honest, and legiti- 
mate. He never tampered with any of the panel inside or 
outside the court room ; and was an utter stranger to the 
thousand ways in which unscrupulous attorneys or parties 
practice upon the prejudices, or passions, or interests of 
jurors. 

Mr. Choate endeared himself much to young men, es- 
pecially of his own profession ; but everybody loved him, 
young and old. There was a charm about his presence, 
which drew at once to him the heart of youth and the re- 
gards and warm attachment of riper years. He was so 
genial and affable. 

AVhen he first came to Boston, some of his old Essex 
clients followed him ; fine old litigants, the heroes of a 
hundred battle fields. Stout old formers with whips in 
their hands, seemed to enjoy with the keenest relish, the 
presence of that refined and elegant scholar and jurist. 



114 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

I never knew or heard of his saying an unkind word in 
or out of court. 

He was sometimes in such great demand, that the con- 
flicting interests of his clients could not be attended to. 
A man with one lawsuit never forgets it, and likes to re- 
mind his counsel of it occasionally. In the minor details 
of cases, clients would often feel aggrieved, and sometimes 
would complain. 

To one of these, who really had some cause to mourn 
over the law's delay, and wlio was just about opening a 
statement of his grievances with dolorous visage, to his 
counsel, Mr. Choate said, at the moment of his entering 
the office, " Mr. C, I suffer with you daily." The client 
was at once mollified by the genial, kindly and sympa- 
thetic tones of his professional advice. 

Another client who, in a very long and tedious equity 
case had employed associate counsel, at Mr. Choate's re- 
quest, was complaining to Mr. Choate, rather tartly, that 
he could get no satisfaction from either. " It seems to 
me, sir," said the client, " that I am like a man between 
two stools, I shall fall to the ground." "Eather," re- 
l^lied Mr. Choate, "like an ass between two bundles of 
hay." 

In his closing argument to the jury, in an important 
insurance cause, in which one prominent subject of discus- 
sion was the course of trade, and the season of crops, and 
the judgment to be used by the captain of the vessel, Mr. 
Choate was commenting, with much earnestness, on the 
fact that his own captain had intelligently planned his 
voyage after leaving a particular port, with reference to 
the known usages of trade and the seasons. "Why, gen- 
tlemen," said he, " what was this captain doing all the 
time ? AVas he consulting upon the interests of his vessel 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 115 

and her owners, or reading Robinson Crusoe, or playing at 
all fours with the mate in his cabin ?" 

No book would be so interesting as the diary of a law- 
yer in full practice, with graphic pictures of the persons 
and incidents, old and young, rich and poor, male and 
female, without distinction, mingled in the scene. Now it 
is success, and now disappointment ; business embarrass- 
ments and family troubles ; injuries to the person and the 
character ; the subjects of inquiry are as varied as time and 
humanity. 

No lawyer had so many characters who visited him, 
from time to time, as Mr. Choate. Among these was — say 
twenty years ago — one Captain Ashton, a short, wiry, 
quick little Englishman, who claimed to have been once 
in the British army. He was a frequent visitor at Mr. 
Choate's office, and very chatty. 

He claimed to have loaned several thousand dollars to 
a trader upon a mortgage of his stock. The trader failed, 
and his creditors contested the mortgage. They urged 
that the captain had no visible means, no property, and 
couldn't have had the money to lend on mortgage ; and, 
moreover, that the trader's stock of goods was so small, 
and his assets so deficient, that he couldn't have had the 
money. 

Captain Ashton contended that his money came to him 
from England in sovereigns, and that he lent this gold to 
the trader. 

It looked rather dubious for Ashton. 

Mr. Choate prepared to try the case for plaintiff Ash- 
ton. It was to come on at Lowell. 

The plaintiff's witnesses were summoned to meet Mr. 
Choate in a room of the hotel. Ashton hadn't met his 
debtor for some time. Mr. Ashton and his counsel, with 



116 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

witnesses were in the private room, when tlie mortgagor, 
who had been notified to attend, came in. Ashton sprung 
at him like a tiger, " You scoundrel," said he, " you have 
cheated me ; you have robbed me of my gold !" 

Mr. Choate remarked to the writer, years afterward, in 
speaking of this case, " That incident satisfied me my client 
was right. I knew it and felt it, and knew that was the 
case for me. I care not how hard the case is — it may 
bristle with difficulties — if I feel I am on the right side ; 
that coAise I id in." 

Mr. Choate got a verdict ; but it was set aside for 
some cause ; and before the second trial Ashton had disap- 
peared. But sufficient facts were subsequently developed 
to leave no doubt that Ashton's story was true. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PROFESSIONAL REMINISCENCES. 

In order to treat the scattering reminiscences of years 
with some consecutiveness and coherence, it will be the 
purpose of this chapter, to grasp in one view the chief 
l^oints of recollection of Mr. Choate as he was, in his prep- 
aration for the court room, in the court room, and in his 
office. In this aspect he is most naturally to he looked 
at, inasmuch as the legal arena was the true forum of his 
life ; and on his tomh-stone he would chiefly have desired 
that the chiseled epitaph should be, " The great Advo- 
cate." 

His plan of the proper preparation and accomplishment 
of a lawyer was a magnificent one. It was almost as com- 
prehensive as Cicero's scheme of education for an orator ; 
which made all knowledge and all art essential tributaries 
to the true speaker's brain and tongue. 

choate's plan for a student at law. 

In the first place, of course, the principles of the com- 
mon law of England, the basis of our own, were to be mas- 
tered. Its adaptation to republican America was to be 
marked, and the modifications it underwent with us, ac- 
cording as the different elements in our constitutional sys- 
tem of government grew or shrank in relative importance. 
To this end, therefore, American history was to be studied 
carefully and critically. Often, in discussing law before 



118 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

the Court, lie would himself not only enliven the discus- 
sion, but throw vivid hglit on the construction of the 
mooted provision by calling the attention of the judges 
to the particular phase of national or political history 
out of which the provision grew. 

The Statute law also was, in some measure, to be made 
familiar. The annual reports of law cases decided, he kept 
up with fully himself,. and recommended the same course 
to others. 

The study of the elementary writers and the text writ- 
ers, who collected all the law upon any one point from the 
numerous decisions, he did not disdain. And he recom- 
mended, in studying the text-books, a plan which he said 
he had always pursued himself; that was, to " break up a 
book," as he styled it, pen in hand, into many subordinate 
little books ; taking from every part of the book whatever 
referred to one single branch of the subject treated, or a 
leading view of the law, in one prominent aspect. Thus 
the literary consecutiveness of the book did not go into 
ihe mind, as the legal consecutiveness of the topics exam- 
ined. And the subjects were better digested, and grasped 
into more complete possession. He was no friend to lum- 
bering up the mind with undigested crude matter. He 
wanted every thing done, to make what was on one's brain 
available and ready for delivery in the mass or in detail. 
Another practice for a student, which he earnestly recom- 
mended, was to take any old reported case, read its mar- 
ginal statement of the facts, then shut the book and study 
out for yourself what ought to be the law on that state of 
facts. Having come to the conclusion, and turitten it doivn 
(for again and again he would insist on the pen as the great 
instrument of accurate thinking), then reopen the book 
and compare your own opinion with the judges' reported 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 119 

decision ; compare the conclusion, and the course of argu- 
ment by which they arrive at it. " Thus the judges of 
the Supreme Court," he would say, "become, without 
knowing it, your own critical legal school teachers." 

But besides the English law, he had himself pursued, 
and was wont to advise, a diligent study of other systems 
of jurisprudence. The Roman law he particularly insisted 
on. He thought its reasonings on points of contested 
rights between man and man, most instructive and liberal- 
izing, even to the student of common law. 

These foundation studies of the lawyer he was in favor 
of pursuing, in the first instance, in some law school ; un- 
disturbed and unconfused by the details of office practice. 
Thus from this retired study of a year or two, he said, a 
man would get a general but commanding view of the 
whole body of the law ; and afterwards, in an office, he 
could apply his principles and grapple with the daily de- 
tails of business. 

But far beyond the immediate studies of the law, his 
professional idea ranged outward and upward into the re- 
gion of general studies and the politer letters. From his 
intimate acquaintance with literature, some have ranked 
him with that weakest class of all the servants of the Court 
— a literary lawyer. He was no literary lawyer — a lawyer 
who aiming to practice in the Courts, tliinks more of his 
literature than of his law — less of his musket than of his 
uniform. No ! he was a hard-headed, strong-brained law- 
yer ; a great lawyer, who knew letters; but to whom lit- 
erature was the slave and not the mistress. I have no 
doubt, from the opinion of others, as well as my own hum- 
ble judgment, that he knew the law better than Ersldne, 
better than Wirt, better than Emmett; although he had 
not the Titanic grasp of first principles in the law which 



120 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Webster held when roused ; nor the j)rodigious stores of 
law learning and black-letter of which Pinkney justly 
boasted. 

But literature to Mr. Choate was of direct sei-vice; and 
in a double way. It quickened his fancy and ingenuity, 
it enlarged his mind, without taking away from him the 
power to narrow down its proportions again to legal dimen- 
sions ; the giant of the Arabian story could get out of his 
small cell, but could not shrink his colossal bulk back 
again at will — but this giant of the law seemed to have 
the expansion and contraction of his intellect at equal com- 
mand. This general literary culture, moreover, was of 
essential service to Mr. Choate as a mental relaxation and 
a pastime. 

I think, at periods of his life, he was conscious of brood- 
ing apprehensions as to the jiermanent integrity of his 
faculties. They were so tine and delicate, yet burned with 
such lightning velocity in their action, that he could not 
help remembering with a melancholy interest the poetic 
aphorism, " Great wits to madness nearly are allied." It 
was often predicted that, like James Otis, he would find his 
mind unhinged at last. But he looked into his beloved 
library, he summoned up his studious recollections of fifty 
years of enthusiasm, he went the rounds of his track of 
daily labor ; and the great intellect kept on its balanced 
course on even poise, strong and steady, no oscillation on 
its level plane — moving more serenely and surely and 
calmly, till in the full exercise of all its enginery, at last 
it abruptly stopped. 

In every way, he made literature servient to his law 
not dominant over it ; if he summoned the Muses around 
him as he stood before the Jury panel, he summoned them 
in chains. From literature he got illustrations, ideas, argu- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 121 

merits, phrases, words ; and last, thoiigli not least, intellec- 
tual enthusiasm. 

On all these accounts, therefore, he vehemently recom- 
mended the study of letters subordinated to law. The 
English lawyer, he would say, graduates at the British 
Universities a scholar, with his head full of polite learning, 
and his heart full of enthusiasm and the memories of Leon- 
idas and Marathon. But he finds the law is a jealous mis- 
tress ; he applies himself to her studies therefore with se- 
verely exclusive zeal ; a few years roll on, and he is all 
law ; liis face is dry and his heart dryer. Now is just the 
time when he should renew and revive those liberal studies 
of his youth, and refresh and sweeten his mind ; now it 
will not hurt him to take his head out of his wig and put 
it into liis libraiy. But he does no such thing ; — and there 
has been but one Lord Erskine. 

In another point of view, Mr. Choate was an earnest 
advocate of letters for the law-student. Our northern and 
English life, he rightly considered was undemonstrative 
and formal ; that it tended to check all impulsive enthusi- 
asm in mind and feeling. Our utilitarian practical philos- 
ophy of existence, also, with the eternal race and scramble 
for the dollar in the distance, lowers the tone of the mind ; 
and, while it cultivates energy, chills enthusiasm, the child 
of nobler asjiirations and sunnier climes. But good litera- 
ture is full of enthusiasm, and studying it you kindle your 
own fires. Thus while you expand, you lift up and heat 
your mind with a generous glow. 

The study of Khetoric of course he would advise. He 
himself was a thorough master of all the rhetoric there was 
on earth. He had studied it, not only in the detail and 
immediate application of style and arrangement, but in its 
essence and origin ; he traced its precepts back to see their 



122 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

source in traits of human nature. Aristotle, lie said, laid 
out a chart of Rhetoric, but with his vast mind he went 
further, and tracked out the principles of the human soul 
from which it sprung and to which it was applicable. 
Cicero and Quintilian, in their practical discussions of the 
art, Mr. Choate knew intimately. And many a creation or 
an an-angement of thought, many a home thrust of argu- 
ment in his own actual practice in Court, I am quite sure, 
owed its origin to their precept, or to his own reflection 
upon their thinking. For in all times, human nature, and 
the rules applicable to it are essentially the same ; form 
varies, but the essence of things is unchanged. Julius 
CfBsar had the same thoughts in his head when he marched 
over Gaul, as Napoleon III. when he marched over Italy. 
Isocrates might set up the scepter of his school of eloquence 
here in the American Republic instead of in the Greek Re- 
public ; and with only trifling changes establish now a 
second rhetorical empire. Mr. Choate called Aristotle's an 
ethical rhetoric ; and I remember that he highly praised 
John Quincy Adams' Lectures on Rhetoric, which were 
read originally at Harvard, and which treated fully of 
Aristotle and all the ancient rhetorical authors. 

He was in the habit of saying, " In literature you find 
ideas. There one should daily replenish his stock." He 
laid irreat stress on the fertilitv of this source of thoughts. 

But it Avas for language, for phrases and words, that, 
more than all, he valued books. He found words in books, 
and he got them into his command by translations from 
Greek and Latin into English. Two thousand years ago 
Cicero stocked his vocabulary by the same plan, translating 
from Greek into Latin ; and in the last age in England, 
William Pitt was trained for ten years to translate Latin 
and Greek both into English. Mr. Choate followed this plan. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 123 

But chiefly in his traiisLation, he attended to the multipli- 
cation of synonyms. For every foreign word he translated, 
he would rack his brain till he got five or six correspond- 
ing English words. This exercise he persevered in daily, 
even in the midst of the most arduous business. Five min- 
utes a day, if no more, he would seize in the morning for 
this task. Tacitus was a favorite author for this purpose, 
and Plautus. Cicero, he said, though noble, could be too 
easily rendered into a cheap and common English ; "and it 
is a rich and rare English that one ought to command, who 
is aiming to control a Jury's ear." 

His idea of diction was, to get hold of striking and 
strange expressions which should help liim to hold on to 
the Jury's fatigued attention. Thus he would always say, 
"four and twenty hundred", instead of twenty-four hundred, 
and vary even the most obvious expression to give it a fresh 
look. But in every part of study, preparatory and final, 
he always relied vastly on the Pen. That instrument is 
the corrector of vagueness of thought and of impression ; 
therefore in translating, in mastering a difhcult book, in 
l^reparing his arguments, in collecting his evidence, he was 
always armed with that, to him, potent Aveapon. 

Finally, after all the circle of studies and means of prep- 
aration thus outlined, there was still another essential in 
his mind for the court lawyer ; that was fervor and elo- 
cution. Like Henry Clay, like Grattan, like Chatham, 
like Curran, he trusted to no native gifts of eloquence. He 
practiced eloquence every day, for forty years, as a critical 
study. He would take some approved author and utter a 
page aloud, but not noisily, in his room ; struggling to ac- 
complish two tilings — to get the whole /ee/fnr/ of every sen- 
tence, and to express it by his tones even more passionately 
than the author by his words ; and also he labored to "get 



124 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

his throat open," as he expressed it ; by which I presume 
he meant, an effort to get out a pure round tone, without 
vociferation or clamor. Edmund Burke's works he chiefly 
recommended for this exercise, as being a cross between 
Bolingbroke and Pitt. 

His example thus is a good lesson to all asj^iring 
youth, who — in a country like ours, more fond of eloquence 
than any nation since the Athenians — ^feel ambitious to 
command the public by earnest discourse. Choate trusted 
to no inspiration of the moment in his speaking. Every 
thing that could be prepared, was prepared ; every nerve, 
every muscle that could be trained, was trained ; every 
energy that daily practice could strengthen was invigorated. 
Then and thus, full armed and glorious, he swept like a 
conqueror across the stage in the scenes of his forensic 
dramas. So all truly noble orators, in every age, have 
trusted not to inspiration, but to preparation. The great 
master, Cicero, when he was President Consul of a republic 
whose banner was unchallenged beneath the stars, resorted 
daily to an oratorio school. 

It is apparent, therefore, in this great modern Advocate's 
teaching and example, how grand his scheme of education 
for the advocate was ; and with what lofty pride he con- 
templated the profession of which he was so illustrious a 
member. He had often on his lips the magnificent meta- 
phor of Archbishop Hooker : "Of Law, no less can be said 
than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the har- 
mony of the spheres ; all things in heaven and earth do 
her reverence ; the greatest as needing her protection, the 
meanest as not afraid of her power." And he spoke 
with sino;ular enthusiasm of Bolino-broke's tribute to the 
Law : " There have been lawyers that were orators, philos- 
ophers, historians ; there have been Bacons and Clarendons, 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 125 

my lord ; there shall be none such any more, till in some 
better age men learn to prefer fame to pelf, and climb to 
the vantage ground of general science." I once remarked 
to him, that the study of law became less dry as it became 
more intelligible, and that a man might absolutely learn to 
like it, " Like it," said he ; " there's nothing else to like 
in all this world." 

HIS TREATMENT OF THE BAR. 

Having such exalted ideas of the proper preparation 
and education of a lawyer, and of the profession itself, it 
would not have been suiprising if he had looked down 
upon his brethren at the Bar — if he had even looked super- 
ciliously upon the young, and contemptuously upon the old 
members of the Bar. Pinkney treated his compeers of his 
own standing at the bar, with short and curt defiance; and 
his juniors, he would use and employ rather than honor. 
In professional consultations, he would drain them of all 
their knowledge and learning in the case, use it all himself, 
and pass it off as his own. But Choate seemed to take the 
greatest pleasure in recognizing and favoring and compli- 
menting the young men of the Bar. His own juniors in a 
cause, he was careful to show to the jury that he respected. 
If any associate gave him a hint or a suggestion, (jr called his 
attention to a point of evidence, he would instantly avail 
himself of it, even if he did not deem it important, saying, 
" My brother reminds me," etc. He thought it no deroga- 
tion from himself to acknowledge obligation to others. In 
all his intercourse with young lawyers, in his office and in 
court, he always elevated their own idea of themselves by 
his treatment of them. Many a youth who went in to 
consult with him, with trembling step and doubting heart, 



126 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

has come out feeling confident and strong, not only in his 
case, but in himself ; he was so reassured by the great law- 
yer's seeming respect for him. No senior counsel at the 
bar, within my recollection, has ever treated young men 
as he did. Could there have been a meeting at his death 
of the young generation of the Massachusetts bar, I think 
his memory would have received a tribute more tearful and 
true hearted than was ever given to the name or the fame 
of any other American lawyer. Many a young heart that 
had never met him except professionally, Avas shrouded in 
gloom at the news of his death ; and many a young man 
will hang up his portrait in his office or bis chamber, and 
gaze daily upon it, for the sake ho less of his inspiring 
than his affectionate memories of the o-rcat forensic soldier. 

But to his peers in years at the Bar, Mr. Choate was 
uniformly decorous and appreciative. He never made them 
feel small in their own eyes, although they must often have 
looked so in his. He persuaded them all that he thought 
them good lawyers ; and some of them I know he did think 
great lawyers. He could see real merit in others, as quickly 
even as they could in themselves. And he was promjit and 
ready to admit it. The only lawyer at the Suffolk Bar 
to whom he did not do full justice, was — Eufus Choate. 

He regarded the profession of the law as not only noble 
in itself, but as ennobling all who were counted in its ranks. 

Every one who wore the Advocate's robe and carried the 
green bag, was respectable in his eyes. They all Avere of 
the number of those, as he was wont to say, "who admin- 
ister the laws;'' or to use another phrase of his, " those who 
are concerned in the administration of this vast and com- 
l)licated system of our law." The office of Judge, whether 
superior or inferior, was, in his mind, a high magistracy. 

He contributed to make many Judges. But he treated 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 127 

young Judges whose ermine his word of request had laid 
upon their shoulders, as respectfully as he treated the 
national ermine of the United States Judiciary, or the ven- 
erable and awful head of the chief Judicial Magistrate of 
Massachusetts. 



HIS CASES, 

It was a part of this true idea of the Law, as a dignity 
in itself, independent of the particular issue involved, that 
he never made any distinction in accepting cases. He took 
every case that came. First come, first served, was his 
motto. Whether this man would pay, and that man would 
not pay ; whether this case would offer a good field for dis- 
play, and that one was before an insignificant tribunal — 
these considerations never seemed to enter his mind. When 
reionins at the summit of his fame, I have known him take 
a little ten dollar case in a Police Court ; and although 
when it came on, the pressure of great cases in which he 
Avas previously retained, forced him to send it to a sub- 
altern, yet at the time he fully intended himself to try it. 
Indeed, he spent a precious liour talking it over with the 
client; a poor person who had never before in his life 
spoken with so great a man. 

I remember a little case where an Irishman sued a 
countryman of his, for slander, in calling him, by way 
merely of angry vituperation, " a murderer." Mr. Choate 
took the case, and actually gave some consulting advice 
about it, and was intending to argue it. It was certified 
up from a lower Court to the Supreme Court, by a provis- 
ion in our Statutes, as the Plaintiff laid his damages high. 
Before the trial Mr. Choate found it would bo impossible 
to try it. It was sent to a young lawyer, and when it came 



128 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

on, tlie Judge wlio was holding the term stormed and ridi- 
culed the idea of such a case being brought before his Court 
at all. Being there, however, it had to be tried ; the Judge, 
to use an expression of the Bar, '"charged like thunder" 
for the Defendant, and the Jury promptly returned a ver- 
dict for the Defendant, luith costs. So the Plaintiff had to 
pocket his title of "murderer," and pay costs for his silly 
charge. 

As Mr. Choate was careless what cases he took, so, also, 
he was utterly reckless how much energy, and learning, and 
time he gave to them. He would go before a Master in 
Chancery, a Referee, a Legislative Commissioner, or Jus- 
tice of Peace in a little back office, with the same glorious 
ardor, and the same complete and glittering preparation, as 
if he was to stand before Judge Story, or Chief Justice 
Shaw. 

A leading member of the Boston Bar who had been 
side by side with him for many years, said to me in a re- 
cent conversation, that the finest performance he ever heard 
from Mr. Choate was in the little back office of a County 
Judge of Probate. 

There are some counselors who attain great success by 
carefully selecting from their large practice, those cases only 
for actual trial, which are so strong on their facts as to be 
likely to be won by advocacy. All their other cases they 
compromise or settle out of court ; but Mr. Choate never 
settled a case in his life from any such motive. In his 
prime, it was his pride to take every thing, and beat every 
thing ; and he rarely lost a verdict. 

About ten years ago there was a criminal cause in the 
United States District Court, in which the captain of a 
vessel was prosecuted for casting away his ship. The in- 
surance companies, to whom it Avas of vital interest that 



BEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 129 

he should be condemned, to exonerate them from the in- 
surance, sent a special messenger to reconnoiter the West 
Indies, the scene of the disaster, and to procure evidence. 
The messenger was himself an able and accurate lawyer. 
He chose his own witnesses ; and on the voyage home he 
had ample leisure to confer with them, and deepen their 
own impression of what they had seen, and what they were 
to say. Upon their arrival, Choate became aware substan- 
tially of what they would testify to. In conversing with 
him about it he said, " The captain's case looks ugly, but I 
shall so on with it, and I think I shall clear him." The 
trial lasted many days. He spoke three days himself. 
The result was — the skipper was acquitted. Here the gov- 
ernment picked their own w^itnesses ; and their agent told 
me, on his arrival at home, that he had collected evidence 
which would settle the case beyond all question. Unfor- 
tunately for him he did not know Eufus Choate. 

All these professional traits — his indiscriminate advo- 
cacy, his uniform ardor, his Napoleonic defiance of difficul- 
ties — would be fully testified to by any member of the bar 
who knew him well. In a speech before the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, of which Mr. Choate was a member, 
Mr. P. W. Chandler, who had been long in practice at the 
same tribunals with him, bore testimony to all these quali- 
ties very fully, and very hap})ily, in these words : 

" Mr. Choate's greatness as a lawyer, apart from his 
remarkable natural powers, must be attributed to his in- 
tense love for, and his enthusiastic devotion to its duties, 
and to an almost utter self-abnegation Avhile engaged in 
the practice of his avocation. His power of application 
was most extraordinary. He was so pressed and absorbed 
by professional engagements that it was often difficult to 
consult him at any length ; and in the preliminary prepa- 

0* 



130 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

tions of a cause he did not manifest the zeal and enthusi- 
asm that might be expected. Indeed there was sometimes 
a feelina; that he took little or no interest in the success of 
his client. But when the trial was fairly commenced, his 
whole energies, all of his powers, were completely absorbed. 
To those who have never been associated with him it is 
impossible to convey any adequate idea of his entire devo- 
tion to the cause on trial. Nothing escaped his attention. 
He never confessed defeat, he never lost heart, he never 
was discouraged ; and at every adverse turn in tlie evi- 
dence, at every discouraging ruling of the judge, his ener- 
gies seemed to rise to meet the new emergency ; and the 
fertility of his resources was wonderful. 

" Nor in his arduous labors did he seem to be influ- 
enced by the ordinary selfish considerations of other men. 
Most of our race are looking forward to some especial and 
prospc-ctive benefit as a reward for present exertions. The 
desire of wealth, the love of power, official position, an old 
aire of ease, the ' Sabine farm' in the distance ; these not 
seldom appear with considerable distinctness, but not 
with him. He appeared to labor for the love of it. He 
found his reward in doing the work which was set before him. 

" The magnitude of the cause, or the character of the 
tribunal, seemed to make no difference. Whenever and 
wherever he appeared, whether in the higliest tribunal of 
the land or before the humblest magistrate known to the 
law, there was sure to be a hard struggle. I have known 
him contest a trifling matter before a Master in Chancery 
for several weeks where the compensation must have been 
entirely inadequate. The ablest argument I ever heard 
him make, and perhaps the ablest it was ever my fortime 
to hear, was before a single judge at chambers, with no au- 
dience, not even the presence of his own client. The 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 131 

amount involved was comparatively small, but the ques- 
tion interested his mind. He had given it a most patient, 
and careful, and thorough investigation ; and for many 
hours he discussed it with all the vigor he could bring to 
bear, with a brilliancy of rhetorical power truly wonder- 
ful, and with an array of all the learning which could by 
any possibility aid him in the case. 

" ' How is it possible,' some one exclaimed, ' that a 
man of his age, after so many years of practice, and in the 
midst of such labor, can bring so much zeal, enthusiasm, 
and power to bear under circumstances like these — no au- 
dience, no applause, no client, a single judge, and a private 
room ?' ' It is hlood,' was the reply, ' and nothing else. 
He can no more help it than the race-horse brought upon 
the com^se can help exerting his whole powers for victory.' 
This is partly true undoubtedly. There was ' blood'— the 
complete mental organization — the nervous energy, the re- 
markable temperament ; but there was also the long and 
careful training, the days and nights of toil to this result, 
and the inflexible principle, worked into the soul by this 
systematic drill, to do every thing in the best manner at 
all times, and to be equal to every occasion. He had 
drawn in the spirit of the great masters of the law enough 
to know and to feel that in undertaking any man's cause, 
his client was entitled to his best energies, his whole pow- 
ers, and all the zeal he could bring to bear upon the mat- 
ter in controversy." 

HIS MORALE OF ADVOCACY. 

The question how far a lawyer may go for his client and 
for victory in a cause, has often been mooted. It is doubt- 
less true, that every man and every cause has a right to the 
benefit of the laws of the land ; has a right to be defended 



132 EEMINISCENCES OF RCJFUS CHOATE. 

according to the laws ; and unless he can be put in jeopardy 
in strict accordance with the principles of evidence and of 
law, he ought not to be jeopardized or harmed, no matter 
what his seeming guilt may be. Hence the most universally 
acknowledged reprobate has a right to a defense. When a 
prisoner accused of murder has, in the course of a trial, 
after " putting himself upon the country," subsequently 
risen in his box, and, notwithstanding his plea of " not 
guilty," confessed his guilt, the court has frequently re- 
fused to receive his acknowledgment, and ordered the trial 
to proceed. They held that he must now be tried by law, 
and so convicted, or else set free. Therefore, the idea is a 
false one that when a party confesses himself in the wrong, 
the lawyer is to abandon the cause. A counsel ought not 
to think any thing about, or know any thing about, whether 
his client is right or not ; he only ought to think luliat can 
legitimately, legally he said for Mm — what, according to 
the accepted principles of our law, is the legal defense. If 
from the powerful presentation of that defense, the guilty 
defendant goes scot free, the fault is not the lawyer's ; but 
if through his scrupulousness even the guilty is convicted 
without really a competency of legal evidence to prove his 
guilt, the lawyer is almost as much guilty as if the inno- 
cent were convicted. 

Our system of law practice is based upon the idea that 
upon the whole, in the long run, more guilt will be pun- 
ished, and more innocence saved, by the eflbrts of counsel 
pulling in op])osite directions with all their might, keeping 
themselves within the rules of legal evidence and legal ar- 
gumentation ; for it must be borne in mind that no one on 
earth knows certainly which is the guilty and which is the 
innocent ; even confession of guilt does not prove guilt. 
Many instances are recorded when, from weakness and from 



1 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 133 

various . motives, men liave said they were guilty, when 
subsequent events have shown they were not so ; and, 
therefore, till the judgment day of all flesh shall separate 
the sinner from the saint, the system of our Anglo-Saxon 
law is the best system for attaining a high average of cor- 
ectness in the adjudication of rights and wrongs. 

Indeed, there are cases reported in the hooks where the 
attorney has heeii sued for abandoning his cause, when the 
evidence came out black and hopeless, or the defendant 
confessed in his private ear his complicity in the crime ; 
and in these reported cases the attorney has been himself 
adjudged guilty of neglect, and mulcted in damages. 

Lord Brougham once entered upon a discussion of this 
subject ; he went as far as it is possible to go in support of 
the doctrine of the utter identification of the counsel with 
the client's legal interest. 

Perhaps, while assenting to the general doctrine, there 
may yet be some degrees in one's absolute acquiescence in 
it practically ; but it is extremely difficult to draw the 

line. 

Mr. Choate accepted and acted in the doctrine with no 
qualification whatever ; he carried it practically as far as 
Lord Brougham, and carried it to the extremest verge of 
honor ; yet he was scrupulously careful not to do any thing 
which would be false to his attorney's oath, taken when he 
entered the bar, to be true to the court as well as the 
client. He was also true and fair to his opposite counsel ; 
he never, during the period of my observation of him, took 
any advantage of doubtful character ; no mean and treach- 
erous ambuscade, no surprises, no pitfalls masked with re- 
assuring flatteries ; he fought hard, but he fought fairly ; 
he conceded to his adversaries nothing that he ought not 
to concede, but he conceded every thing up to that line. 



134 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

As he never got angry, so he never, from pettishness, 
bore down on an antagonist with unusual severity, or from 
mere spite tried his cause with gratuitous sharpness and 
disposition to worry ; and he never pettifogged ; but he took 
every just and proper advantage ; he never yielded an inch 
of real standing ground ; he never gave up ; he fought his 
cause through every court into which it could be carried or 
driven ; and he went for victory to the last beat of the 
pulse and the last roll of the drum. 

Many lawyers make a gallant struggle in a cause when 
it is first up ; but if after verdict it is again to be con- 
tested, on dilatory motions, or in a new trial, they lose 
their interest and dispute it languidly. Mr. Choate could 
not bear to try a cause over twice ; it lost its novelty, its 
picturesqueness to him, and became stale ; but, neverthe- 
less, he wTut into the battle of its repetition with the same 
gallant and defiant steadiness ; the same labor, the same 
zeal. He had the feeling of the true soldier, w^ithout fear 
and without reproach — ^he must win or die ; that case was 
his Malakoff, it must be taken. 

No matter how sick he was, if he could not get indul- 
gence from the court, he must battle on in the case ; no 
matter how manv considerations mio;ht be su2;2;ested of the 
formidable antagonism of facts or of counsel, of the insig- 
nificance of his client's interest, or the feebleness of his 
cause, that Malakoff must come down ; and before its 
walls, he would rally every pulsation of his power to the 
extremest energy of his whole being. 

How gallant it was to see him standing in a disputed 
cause before some judge of mind enough to comprehend 
him ; and see him turning from judge to jury, and from 
jury to judge, struggling and battling to do away with or 
to qualify the deadly ruling ; to see him agonizing, as it 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 135 

were, before the judgment seat ; standing up there with all 
his powers in action, the perspiration of his energy abso- 
lutely raining from his curling locks, the great veins in 
his temples standing out like the veins of a mettled blood- 
horse on his race-ground, the glorious flash of his eye burn- 
ing on the intent judge, his head expanding with a thousand 
thoughts, and charging on the jury Avith the whole mag- 
netic battery of all his tones, his thunder, and his smiles ! 
And, though the case grew even blacker and more des- 
perate under the decisions of the judge, he never wavered 
I have seen the court rule him down, his statement of evi- 
dence directly contradicted by his adversary appealing to 
the minutes of the Bench, the judge check him in mid 
career with the declaration that he was " all wrong," but the 
daring advocate was not at all discomfited ; instantly, as 
the laugh of the crowd and even of the jury rose, he would 
plunge away into some other portion of the discussion of 
the case, distract the minds he could not conquer, cover 
up his momentary defeat with an electric burst of humor, 
setting the court room, judge and all, in a roar, and rush 
on in his argument ; going for a disagreement of the jury, 
at any rate, and another trial, with one more chance for 
victory. 

In the same address of Mr. Chandler to which a refer- 
ence has been made, he discusses the morale of this chival- 
ric devotion of Mr. Choate to his cause, with the practical 
wisdom which w^e should expect from a lawyer of so much 
experience, and, at the same time, so much genuine prin- 
ciple. He says : 

"It is not improbable that this earnest performance of 
duty may have been the occasion of grave misconstruction 
on the part of a portion of the public, in relation to his 
principles of action. People outside of our tribunals of 



136 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE, 

justice, and, not seldom, spectators themselves, are very 
apt to dictate tlie course which a lawyer ought to pursue, 
and openly express their indignation when his efforts run 
counter to their own prejudices and pre230sessions ; and their 
indignation knows no hounds when the final result does 
not accord with their own judgments. 

" The necessity of the legal jjrofession to the machinery 
of the social fabric in a free State is undeniable, and all 
history shows that i»opular liberty is best preserved, ad- 
vanced and defended, where the legal profession is most 
unrestricted and free. There is, and there has been, no 
free profession in a despotism. When a celebrated Emperor 
of Russia was in England, he expressed the utmost aston- 
ishment at the consideration in which the legal profession 
was there held. He declared that there never was but one 
lawyer in his dominions, and he had caused him to be hung. 
And well he might, for such a man would be much in the 
way of the arbitrary proceedings in a despotic country. 
And even in free and enlightened governments, the pojju- 
lar excitement against private individuals, who happen to 
incur popular odium, is a dangerous element, which re- 
quires some check in the machinery of society itself, or great 
wrongs will often be done. When popular excitement is 
at the highest point — when po})ular clamor is loudest, and 
a victim is absolutely demanded, and seems necessary for 
peace, it is no small safety for every member of the com- 
munity to have a class of men educated and trained for the 
pur2:)ose of defending those who can not defend themselves, 
to step forth as the advocate, if not the friend, of those who 
are hunted by popular clamor, to give their time, their tal- 
ents, their learning and their skill in defense of those whom 
all others desert — to breast the fury of the people — to stem 
the popular current — and to insist upon a full, fliir and 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 137 

impartial investigation before the victim is offered up. And 
when we reflect that men have been convicted and have 
suffered the extreme penalty of the law, whose innocence 
was afterwards made manifest to the world ; that men 
have sometimes confessed themselves guilty of crimes of 
which they were entirely innocent, we shall see more clearly 
the need of a legal profession, and shall be more cautious 
of condemning those who enter into their duties with zeal 
and energy and enthusiasm — who mean to do their Avhole 
duty irrespective of the applause or clamor of the public 
while laboring under temporary excitement." 

This view of a lawyer's duties is the true view, and yet, 
at Boston dinner tables, I have heard Mr. Choate called 
" a grand engine of social oppression." 

When you brought your case to him he heard you with 
paternal gentleness and encouragement. But the duty of 
his junior counsel was not done when he had simply re- 
tained Choate. He must watch liim. Until the cause was 
actually opened in Court, he was a most uncertain ally. 
Whoever would be sure of his services nuist follow him up 
and hold on to him, remind him perpetually, and when the 
cause was reached almost seize and take him bodily into 
Court. Once there, in his chair, and the case begun, there 
was no more danger. 

Choate had heard the opening, his mind was now on 
the facts ; and, like the tiger who has tasted blood, he 
must pursue the game. But prior to that such was the 
multiplicity of his engagements, he was in so many cases 
at the same time, in so many Courts, and moreover he was 
at liable to be sick with violent headaches, that unless 
you were very assiduous, your gi-eat champion would slip 
through your fingers. When, however, you had once sat 



138 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

down by him at the table, before the faces of the Jury, all 
was safe. 

After the cause was opened and as it progressed, par- 
ticularly if it was a long case, Choate seemed to become 
utterly lost in it. He thought of nothing and felt for noth- 
ing but his client. He acted just as that client himself 
would have acted had he suddenly been gifted with the 
gifts of law and of tongues. From that moment, the cli- 
ent's interest was Choate's relio;ion. 

He was never a respecter of persons, except of truly 
great persons. The accidental distinctions of American 
society he thought nothing of. The shabby chailatanry 
of aristocracy in a democratic republic, he scouted at. The 
maxims of self-interest also, pecuniary or general, were a 
sealed book to him ; and hence his client, whoever he was, 
was sure to have the whole of him and the best of him, 
whatever interest or person was arrayed in the hostile ranks. 
Whoever or whatever stood in the way of Ms success, 
whether high or low, rich or poor, must go down. It would 
go down with no unnecessary flourish of trumpets, no bul- 
lying, no violence, no insult, — but it must go down. 

He has often told me, that when actually in a case a 
lawyer should surrender all his mind to it. " Uo not read," 
he would say, "even in the evening or the intermission ; 
think of the case, dream of the case incessantly till it is 
over. And always," he would add, "proceed upon the cap- 
ital rule to do your very best on every occasion." 

His demeanor and bearing in the court room, was very 
interesting. It was a model of gentlemanly deference. He 
took his seat in the most modest, unassuming way. Indeed 
he never did any thing which had the appearance, to 
use the vulgar phrase, of " making a spread." If, as some- 
times happened, the opposite counsel was a young man, the 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 139 

manner of the youth would generally indicate that he was 
the greater man of the two. Even when the evidence was 
in and Mr. Choate came into Court, on the morning of the 
argument, pressing his way through the thronged Bar and 
the crowded aisles, he came wath no bold warranty of su- 
premacy and success in his manner. He would slide defer- 
entially into his chair, sling off several of his innumerable 
coats, pile up his papers before him, rub his hands through 
his tangled hair, push his little table slightly away, rise 
and say something to the Judge, which seemed the begin- 
ning of a low conversation, but which you afterwards dis- 
covered was a " May it please your Honor," then turn to the 
Jury with a trite remark or two — the intent crowd would 
settle a little— and then in a few sentences more, ere any- 
body was aware of it, he would be sailing up into the heaven 
of pathetic actjuration, and bearing you along with him ; 
like a stately balloon swinging steadily upwards, far away 
in the air. 

During the whole trial his "action" was a study. In 
his later years, he rarely knew much about a cause till he 
got into Court. But after the opening by his junior, and 
hearing the other side, he seemed to grasp it as by intu- 
ition. He gave great attention to all the opening prelim- 
inaries. He did not chat with those surrounding him, nor 
did his eyes wander. Hardly were the preliminaries fin- 
ished when he seemed to have taken in the whole case. 
Such had been his immense experience that I suppose he 
had a parallel in his memory for almost every case, and 
could see the end from the beginning, just as great and ex- 
perienced soldiers will see the future inevitable combina- 
tions of a battle from the opening tactics ; for let any in- 
terlocutoiy point, in discussing evidence or the character 
of the case, arise, even very near the beginning ; and Mr. 



140 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Clioate would follow his junior in its discussion with a 
step as steady, and a theory as true, as if he had been con- 
sulting upon it for a week. 

He took constant and copious notes, in an indescjibable 
and incomprehensible hand. He would write on, up to the 
very last moment before rising to address the jury. It has 
been said that he wrote sheets of manuscript enough to 
stretch in straight line across the Atlantic Ocean. AVhat 
all this was which be wrote nobody ever fully knew. Much 
of it was evidence, much of it also, I suspect, was rhetoric 
and incidental observations. It always seemed to me that 
he cultivated his blind hand to mask what he did write. 
When he came to address the jury, two thirds of his argu- 
ment apparently would be written ; and this, with other 
circumstances, always led me to think that he actually be- 
gan his speech to the jury, in his head and. on his paper, 
upon the very first page of his notes, as the evidence was 
going in. Certainly, in most of his cases, he had no time 
after the evidence was in to prepare such copious writings 
as those which he spoke from. 

Every night during a trial he took home his notes, col- 
lated, digested, and reaiTanged them with reference to the 
final argument. He could do this ; but any less experi- 
enced mind would many times have gone astray in the 
attempt. But from the lijDS of the first witness, he saw the 
prophecy of his argument. 

He was critically careful to have every word down on 
paper which was uttered in evidence ; and if he was called 
out of Court at any time for a few moments, he would 
compliment some young member of the Bar or student 
who happened to be near him, by placing him in his seat 
to continue the notes of the evidence while he was gone. 

In a great patent case, in which Daniel Webster was 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 141 

opposed to him, he opened his speech to the jury by say- 
ing : " Gentlemen of the jury, I have no fear for my canse 
on its merits, but (glancing around at Webster) I do fear 
transcendent ability, exerted with triumphant conlidence." 
Webster smiled grimly ; and when, after two hours of 
talkins:, the Court took a recess of a few minutes, and 
Choate went out, tlie great Daniel quietly took up some 
pages of the extraordinary writing of the opening of 
Choate's argument, tore it up deliberately, and handed 
it round to the delighted ladies, who encircled the arena 
of the two heroes' contests in one long crescent of beauty. 

HIS MAGNETISM AND KNOWLEDGE OF A JURY. 

Mr. Choate's appeal to the jury began long before his 
final argument ; it began when he first took his seat before 
them and looked into their eyes. He generally conti-ived 
to get his position as near to them as was convenient ; if 
possible having his table close to the bar, in front of their 
seats, and separated from them only by a naiTow space for 
passage. Then he looked over them and began to study 
them. Long before the evidence was in, either by observa- 
tion or inquiiy, he had learned the quality of every one of 
them. It is said that a considerable jjortion of Mr. Web- 
ster's closing appeal in the great Salem Knapp case was in- 
tended especially for one juror of a very conscientious char- 
acter. Many and many a time Mr. Choate directed solid 
masses of his oratorio artillery upon the heart or head of a 
peculiar juryman, whose individuality he had learned dur- 
ing the trial. I saw him once in an argument walk straight 
up to a juryman, and say, " Sir, I address myself to you. I 
will convince you now, if you will give me your attention ;" 
and then he proceeded to launch upon him a fiery storm of 



142 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

logical thunderbolts to conquer or jDaralyze wliat he saw was 
his deadly hostility. Frequently, when he was in a case, 
he has said to me, " That juryman in front," or " that 
one on the back seat, are the only ones I fear. The fore- 
man, thank God, is all right." Or again he would say : 
" Do you see that somber looking individual in the mid- 
dle ? His private history makes him loth to believe us ;" 
or, " That man there thinks he knows so much, he's deter- 
mined to have it all his own way." Thus he daguerreo- 
typed their individual characters on his mind before he 
spoke to them. 

But he not only observed them to iind them out, he 
watched them to impress them. No chance was lost in 
the progress of the case for this object ; no opportunity for 
raising a quiet smile or a loud laugh ; for interjecting some 
propitiatory remarks ; for showing the superiority of his 
own good nature over his adversary ; for saying something- 
grateful to msn generally, so that the jury could hear it ; or 
even tickling them by some home thrust carelessly thrown out. 
It used to be said of Henry Clay, in the United States 
Senate, that he was a magnificent actor ; certainly, it 
might be said of Mr. Choate that he was in Court a con- 
summate actor. It always seemed to a close observer as if 
he did every thing for effect upon the jury, from the read- 
ing of the writ to the last w^ord of the argument. There 
he sat, calm, contemplative ; in the midst of occasional 
noise and confusion solemnly unruffled ; always making 
some little headway either with the jury, the court, or the 
witness ; never doing a single thing which could by possi- 
bility lose him favor, ever doing some little thing to win 
it ; smiling benignantly upon the counsel when a good 
thing was said ; smiling sympathizingly ujjon the jury 
when any juryman laughed or made an inquiry ; wooing 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 143 

them all the time with his magnetic glances, as a lover 
might woo his mistress ; and seeming to preside over the 
whole scene with an air of easy superiority ; exercising 
from the very first moment an imdefinahle sway and in- 
fluence upon the minds of all before and around him. 

His humor and wit helped him in every stage of the 
cause. It relieved the tired attention, and often would 
kindle up such a sympathetic conflagration of glee all over 
the court room, that the dry case seemed to take a new 
start from that moment, and the lawyers looked up as if 
they had taken in a sudden draft of fresh air. His humor 
was most distinguished for its odd association of very op- 
posite ideas, and ideas naturally very distant from each 
other. Many of his great and sudden mirthful eftects 
were produced by his tone and manner, quite as much as 
by his words. He would utter them so quietly, masking 
them by a very deliberate and solemn utterance of the 
whole sentence, till suddenly the point broke out. A 
counsel in a patent cause interrupted him with the decla- 
ration, " There's nothing original in your patent ; your 
client did not come at it naturally." Choate looked at 
him one instant with mirthful scorn. " What does my 
brother mean by naturally V said he. " Naturally ! we 
don't do any thing naturally. Why, naturally^ a man 
would walk down Washington street with his pantaloons 
off \" The oddity of the idea, no less than the force of the 
argument involved, combined with the slightly sarcastic 
jocoseness of the manner, to make the joke irresistible, and 
every human being in the court room laughed immoderately. 
Even the grave United States judge — for it was in the Dis- 
trict Court — absolutely rolled on his seat with laughter. 
In seeking to keep out the evidence of a certain witness in 
another case, Mr. Choate said, " This witness' statement 



144 EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

is no more like the triitli than a pebhle is like a star ;" 
then he paused, the queerness of the comparison provoked 
a smile, but on he went with his peculiar intonation, " or 
a witch's broom-stick is like a banner-stick," This sudden 
climax of comparison, as might be expected, produced 
great shouting. 

In a railroad accident case, where they ran over a car- 
riage at a crossing, he was showing that the company could 
not have had any look-out. " They say," he exclaimed, 
" the engine-driver was the look-out. The engine-driver the 
look-out ! AVhy what was he doing at this moment of 
transcendent interest ?" (the moment of j)assing the cross- 
road.) " What was the look-out doing ? Oiling his 
pumps, they say — oiling his pumps, gentlemen of the 
jury ! a thing he had no more business to be doing than 
he had to be ivrititig an ej)ic 2'>oem of tiventy-four lines." 
The association of ideas here between the oily engine man 
and the creation of an epic poem, was one of the most ex- 
traordinary ever uttered ; but its effect was decisive. 

All along the case, like the electric spark upon the 
wire, his humor and sj)ortiveness sparkled and shone ; 
cheering and irradiating the dull and tedious stages of the 
day's investigation. If, as was sometimes, though rarely 
the case, he left the cause with his juniors for half a day, 
what a contrast, to those who had been spectators of the 
whole, there was in the life and movement of the scene ! 
How every thing seemed to drag, the judge to grow 
drowsy, the jury to become discontented ! It was like 
the stage after the star goes off; or the heavens when the 
stars go out. But let him come rolling and muttering 
into Court, invested in the panoply of all his coats, and 
how quickly all was life and interest again ! 

His courage in a cause was indomitable. No disaster, 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 145 

no breaking do\yn of a witness, no unexpected ruling of the 
Court " took his courage out of him." He never thought any 
case lost, till "judgment" had been entered, and a "motion 
to review" the judgment denied. And he not only struggled 
to the last, but he struggled bravely; with high hope, and 
cheering all with confidence. He tried a weak cause, I 
think, better than a strong one. The worse the cause was, 
the stronger he was ; a very safe cause he did not seem to 
know accurately what to do witli. The richness of his evi- 
dence embarrassed him. He was accustomed to maneuver 
a few troops, and concentrate them on many points of the 
adverse line, with masterly intellectual strategy ; but with 
an army bigger than the enemy, he actually did not know 
wdiat to do. In this respect he was very different from 
Webster. Webster was not very formidable in a weak 
case. But if it was strong, he was invincible ; no man 
could take his verdict from him. Choate, however, seemed 
strongest when literally he almost created his case. 

Mr. Choate's manner to the opposite counsel was al- 
ways conciliatory, never supercilious. If the counsel was 
young, his manner to him was gentle and paternal. Some- 
times a brazen-faced lawyer, who had won an equivocal 
j)Osition by his very roughness and impudence, would try 
the game of brusqueness and bullying with him; supposing 
from his suavity and dignity that something could be gained 
by vulgar audacity. But Mr. Choate had ways of dealing 
with men, known only to himself. He would put such a 
man do^^'n very early in the case, and do it so mildly and 
neatly, that the victim would hardly know what hurt him. 
He would feel that the laugh was against him, but could 
hardly tell why. In bandying words and in repartee, 
Choate was unrivaled. His prompt wit was never so scin- 
tillating as when it flashed out of the dark cloud which 



146 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

gathered over his case from some damaging remarks of his 
adversary, or gloomy testimony of a witness. His repar- 
tees, too, were always made wdth an air of regretful neces- 
sity ; not as if he said them for victory or for resentment. 
This added exceedingly to their effect. They seemed so 
very lionest. 

His manner to the judge was always in the highest de- 
gree deferential. It was almost filial. He had a feeling 
of poetic veneration for the judge, as the titular sovereign 
of that forensic scene which was the theater of his love 
as well as of his labors. How splendid a character, and 
how august a figure was his ideal of the judge, apj^ears in 
the word-picture of such a magistrate, which he drew in 
his great speech in the Massachusetts Convention against 
an elective -judiciary. He said every judge should have 
something of the venerable and illustrious attach to his 
character and function in the feclinfrs of men ;and he went 
on to observe : " The good judge should be profoundly 
learned in all the learning of the law, and he must know 
how to use that learning. Will any one stand up here to 
deny this ? In this day, boastful, glorious for its ad- 
vancing popular, professional, scientific, and all education, 
will any one disgrace himself by doubting the necessity of 
deep and continued studies, and various and thorough at- 
tainments, to the bench ? He is to know not merely the 
law which you make and the legislature makes, not consti- 
tutional and statute law alone, but that other, ampler, that 
boundless jurisprudence, the common law, which the suc- 
cessive generations of the State have silently built up ; that 
old code of freedom which we brought with us in the May- 
flower and Arabella, but which in the progress of centuries 
we have ameliorated and enriched and adapted wisely to 
the necessities of a busy, prosperous and wealthy commu- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 147 

nity, — that he must know. And where to find it ? In 
vohimes which you must count hy hundreds, by thousands ; 
fining libraries ; exacting long labors ;- the labors of a life- 
time, abstracted from business, from politics ; but assisted 
by taking part in an active judicial administration ; such 
labors as produced the wisdom and won the fame of Par- 
sons, and Marshall, and Kent, and Story, and Holt, and 
Mansfield. If your system of appointment and tenure does 
not present a motive, a help for such labors and such learn- 
ing ; if it discourages, if it disparages them, in so far it is 
a failure. 

" In the next place, he must be a man, not merely up- 
right, not merely honest and well-intentioned — this of 
course — but a man who will not respect persons in judg- 
ment. And does not every one here agree to this also ? 
Dismissing, for a moment, all theories about the mode of ap- 
pointing him, or the time for which he shall hold office, sure 
I am, we all demand, that as far as human virtue, assisted 
by the best contrivances of human wisdom, can attain to it, 
he shall not respect persons in judgment. He shall know 
nothing about the parties, every thing about the case. He 
shall do every thing for justice, nothing for himself, nothing 
for his friend, nothing for his patron, nothing for his sov- 
ereign. If on the one side is the executive power, and the 
legislature, and the people — the sources of his honors, the 
givers of his daily bread — and on the other, an individual 
nameless and odious, his eye is to see neither great nor 
small ; attending only to the ' trepidations of the balance.' 
If a law is passed by a unanimous legislature, clamored for 
by the general voice of the public, and a cause is before 
him on it in which the whole community is on one side 
and an individual nameless or odious on the other, and he 
believes it to be against the Constitution, lie must so de- 



148 EEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

clare it, or there is no judge. If Athens comes there to 
demand that the cnp of hemlock be put to the lips of the 
wisest of men, and he believes that he has not corrupted 
the youth, 7ior omitted to worship the gods of the city, nor 
introduced neiv divinities of his oivn, he must deliver him, 
thousrh the thunder light on the unterrified brow." 

Althoudi of course in all his lifetime he confronted but 
few judges who were equal to his noble ideal, yet he always 
treated the ofhce, the magistracy, as if the incumbent Avere 
fully up to it, intellectually and morally. Sometimes when 
he got out of Court, after he had been exhibiting treasures 
of thought and throes of energy before a judge who sat, 
armed in immobility, unmoved by thought, law, or pas- 
sion, he has said to me, in his hot wrath, " That judge is an 
old woman — ^lie's an old fool — he can't put two ideas to- 
gether — ^lie ain't fair — ^lif's ugly as the devil !" But when 
his momentary heat passed off he would be the first to ac- 
knowledge that perhaps the judge was right, after all ; 
" and, at any rate," he would say, " I know he means to 
be right." And I remember to have heard him speak in 
terms of the highest encomium of one judge, now living, 
against whom he often, in a storm of disappointment at 
his unshaken rulings, volleyed forth much conversational 
thunder. 

Even a Sheriff, when he was addressing a sheriff's jury, 
he regarded as a delegated minister of the law, and clothed 
temporarily with its ermine and insignia. He showed this 
on one such occasion when the adverse lawyer, twenty years 
younger than himself, treated the sheriff with a flippancy 
and disrespect which moved Mr. Choate's disapprobation. 
There the lawyer sat, sprawling about over his chair, ad- 
dressing the presiding sheriff with great familiarity, and 
never rising out of his seat. At length it came Mr. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 149 

Clioate's turn to say something upon an interlocutory- 
point of evidence. Slowly and decidedly he rose up, stood 
an instant, and then commencing, said : "I rise, Mr. 
Chairman (for I always stand in jjuhlicly addressing the 
sheriff of my county), to say before you upon this matter/' 
etc. He did not look at the opposite counsel, hut every 
one felt the application, and there was a general buzz of 
approval. After that, which ever w^ay the other lawyer 
did, there was laughter. If he got up in s^ieaking to the 
chairman-sheriff, they laughed, because he seemed shamed 
into it ; if he sat down, they laughed, because they knew 
he must be ashamed of it. 

To thejmy, Mr. Choate's manner was that of a friend, 
a friend solicitous to help them through their tedious in- 
vestigation ; never that of an exi^ert combatant, intent on 
victory, and looking upon them as only instruments for its 
attainment. 

Every thing he did in Court, in manner and in word, 
was done very quickly. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, 
it was done with an air of great deliberation. It ivas 
quick, it seemed slow. If he rose to discuss an interlocu- 
tory point of evidence or practice, he got up half way and 
connnenced, " May it please your Honor," — then he seemed 
to drag the rest of his length after him up into a per- 
pendicular, and advanced some sentences before he fully 
straightened up. Of course this was not always, but often 
the case. Sometimes, though rarely, he would seem to 
champ and foam as he rolled about in his seat, impatient 
to reply to a severe antagonist who was trying to keep out 
one of his witnesses ; but usually he struggled uj) from 
his chair, commenced in a most casual sort of way, as 
if he knew he was right, but it was of very little conse- 
quence ; the loss would be theirs, not his. Soon the sen- 



150 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 



tences would multiply, the Llood mount, the contentious 
appetite warm by what it fed on ; and before he sat down 
he would often make one of his best short speeches — a full 
speech in miniature. Many of these were very fine and 
commanding, not only for their law and their logic, but 
their genius. In these short parades of his eloquence one 
would be most struck with the precision and neatness of 
his statement, the graphic character of his pictures, the 
telling point of his illustration — a metaphor sometimes so 
2)at to the purpose that it would strike conviction like a 
shock to your thoughts — and two or three little closing, 
compact sentences, which would sum up the whole argu- 
ment about the controverted point, sending it home in 
solid volley. In these encounters of small arms, the agil- 
ity and muscle of his intellect were perhaps better seen 
than in the encounter of large arms in the great argument 
of hours. 

His speech to Evidence, cither in its support or strug- 
gling to exclude it, was one of his grand powers. He had 
such a store-house of analogies in his mind, that he could 
work over and work over a proposition of evidence, until 
he brought it under an acknowledged principle of law, or, 
on the other hand, removed it far from any acknowledged 
principle of law. At Nisi Prius it was almost impossible 
for a judge to detect the fallacy which often lurks in these 
arguments for the competency of evidence, so subtle was 
the craft of their invention, so plausible the cunning of 
their arrangement, and so sympathetic was the ardor with 
which he presented them. 

It sometimes happened, especially in Patent causes, that 
he did not think it safe to show his hand early in the case, 
by saying frankly what precise points his client rested on. 
When this vvas so, it was very interesting to see how 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 151 

adroitly and skillfully he eluded or resisted the efforts of 
the counsel, and even the Court, to compel him to a disclos- 
ure. In a very important patent cause which was upon 
trial before a judge of great ability and shrewdness, the 
Court asked him at the recess at the close of the first morn- 
ing, " to state a little more fully what principles he relied 
on in his patent." " Oh, certainly," he unhesitatingly re- 
plied. " I was about to do that this afternoon, but I will 
very cheerfully anticipate it ;" and then putting on his 
most blind and solemn face, he rushed into a very fluent, 
elaborate, and apparently intelligible description of the 
desired point. When, however, this had proceeded some 
time, the keen judge, who saw that he was not getting any 
light, interrupted him just at the conclusion of one sen- 
tence, " There, Mr. Choate, just there ! Now, will you tell 
me just there exactly what you mean by that language ?'' 
" Undoubtedly, your honor," and he did state a little more 
clearly what he seemed to desire, but immediately after 
stated it again a little more vaguely ; and, in fine, though 
interrupted several times, contrived to talk half an hour in 
such a way, that it could not be said at all that he refused 
the information, nor, on the other hand, could it be said 
that he gave the least ray of the much -longed-for light. 
At last, the judge leaned back in his seat, exhausted with 
his keenly-attentive effort to follow and catch Choate in 
the nimbleness of this intellectual sally ; and suffered him 
to close unmolested with any further inquiry. As Mr. 
Choate gathered his papers into his green bag and went 

out, I remarked to him, "Judge does not seem to 

have got mucli light yet." " No," with a shrug and a 
wink, said he ; " it will be a good while before he does, I 
rather think." The truth was, in the critical posture of 
the case, it would have been extremely dangerous for his 



152 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

client, to define at tlie outset precisely where he would rest. 
He wanted to draw the fire of the other side first. 

This case was hotly contested, but at last, when Choate 
thought the time had come, he slioived Ms hand, and got a 
verdict. 

He sat in court during a trial, ajiparently wholly un- 
conscious that he was the cynosure of all eyes ; that the 
crowd inside as well as outside of the bar were starino- at 

O 

his raven locks, the eagle luster of his look, as he would 
run his big white hands, both at a time, up and down and 
over the black curls on his head, vexed in thought ; the 
numerous coats piled over his chair and piled on to his 
back ; and the erect firm figure he presented when he 
straightened himself up to say any thing with emjjhasis to 
court or jury. Except by his head thus laureled with curls, 
— from which, by every token, intellect looked — his marked 
physiognomy, and the homage paid him by all around him, 
no one would suppose that that was the Magnus Apollo, 
the King of the drama, to whom all the rest of the perform- 
ers were subordinates and supernumeraries. He himself 
never thought of it. He was always absorbed with the 
world within ; never, except when in his battle, with the 
world without. When not in action, he sat pensive and 
profound ; incessantly he ' rubbed his close curling locks 
when not writing or speaking, and tossed his hair up from 
behind on his head, with a short, quick, impatient jerk, as 
if thought was stirring and tumultuous within for ever. 
Occasionally, if he perceived any thing "jolly," as he 
phrased it, especially if the Court condescended to say any 
thing mirthful, he would lean back and throw his head 
round upon the bar, with a sweeping glance and an electric 
smile which would make the whole semicircle of lawyers 
feel momentarily cheerful. 



liEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 153 

His smile was a peculiar one. It was a thoughtful, 
but a beautiful smile. It always seemed to me a very 
efficient instrument of his fascination. It did not seem so 
hearty as it was rich and fascinating. Coming out, as it 
did, upon a face so wan and dark, its effect was luminous. 
But it was not a soul-felt smile ; it was an intellectual 
smile. His dark, sad eyes did not laugh ; his waving lips 
alone spoke mirth ; and the expression of glee did not last 
a moment on his features — it glittered, and was gone. 

His generalship of a case throughout was Napoleonic. 
He was as careful as Bonaparte to leave no point un- 
guarded, and to pass over nothing which might by possi- 
bility be turned to service. He never committed the blun- 
der of despising his enemy ; but always fought on the plan 
of supposing the adversary to be about to display all the 
possible power of his side. He never believed himself 
victorious, till he was victorious. Until the last moment 
he fought hard and guardedly, with both prudence and 
j)Ower. 

His examination of witnesses-in-chief was admirable. 
He drew out a narrative of humble facts, in such a Avay 
that they lay out before the mind's eye like history writ- 
ten by master pens. 

But his cross-examination , was a model. As was said, 
in speaking of his conversations, he never assaulted a wit- 
ness as if determined to brow-beat him. He commented 
to me once on the cross-examinations of a certain eminent 
counselor at our Bar with decided disapprobation. Said 
he, " This man goes at a witness in such a way that he 
inevitably gets the jury all on the side of the witness. I 
do not," he added, " think that is a good plan." His own 
plan was far more wary, intelligent, and circumspect. He 
had a profound knowledge of human nature, of the springs 



154 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

of liuman action, of the thoughts of human hearts. To 
get at these and make them patent to the jury, he would 
ask only a few telling questions — a very few questions, but 
generally every one of them was lired point blank, and hit 
the mark. He has told me, " Never cross-examine any 
more than is al)solutely necessary. If you don't break 
your witness, he breaks you ; for he only repeats over in 
stronger language to the jury his story. Thus you only 
give him a second chance th tell his story to them. And 
besides, by some random question you may draw out some- 
thing damaging to your OAvn case." This last is a fright- 
ful liability. Except in occasional cases, his cross-exami- 
nations were as short as his arguments were long. He 
treated every man who ai^peared like a fair and honest per- 
son on the stand, as if upon the presumption that he was 
a gentleman ; and if a man appeared badly, he demolished 
him ; but with the air of a surgeon performing a disagreeable 
amputation — as if he was profoundly sorry for the neces- 
sity. Few men, good or bad, ever cherished any resentment 
against Choate for his cross-examination of them. His 
whole style of address to the occupants of the witness' 
stand was soothing, kind, and reassuring. When he came 
down heavily to crush a witness, it was with a calm, reso- 
lute decision, but no asperity — nothing curt, nothing tart. 
I never saw any witness get the better of him in an en- 
counter of wit or impudence. Very rarely, if ever, did he 
get the laugh of the court room fairly against him. He 
had all the adroitness of the Greek Pericles ; of whom his 
adversary said, that he could throw Pericles, but when he 
did throw him he insisted upon it that he never was down, 
and he persuaded the very spectators to believe him. Oc- 
casionally Mr. Choate would catch a Tartar, as the phrase 
goes, in his cross-examinations. In a District Court case 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 155 

he was examining a government witness, a seaman who 
had tm-necl States' evidence against his comrades, who had 
stolen moneys from the ship on a distant shore. The wit- 
ness stated that the other defendant, Mr. Choate's cHent, 
instigated the deed. " Well," asked Choate, " what did he 
say ? Tell us how and loliat he spoke to you T' " Why," 
said the witness, " he told us there was a man in Boston 
named Choate, and he'd get us off if they caught us with 
the money in our hoots." Of course a prodigious roar of 
mirth followed this truthful satire ; but Choate sat still, 
bolt upright, and perfectly imperturbable. His sallow face 
twisted its corrugations a little more deeply ; but he uttered 
the next question calmly, coolly, and with absolute intre- 
pidity of assurance. 

His voice, in examining witnesses, was, I think, richer 
than in his speaking. It seemed more under control, and 
more sonorous and musical. In speaking, his frenzy of 
excitement always robbed his voice of much of its melody. 
Its tones seemed flattened out by his vehemence, as waves 
are flattened down by the violence of the very winds that 
raise them. The contrast between Mr. Choate's tone in 
examining, and that of the counsel Avhom he followed, was 
generally very marked. His voice would seem to take 
hold of the witness, to exercise a certain sway over him, 
and to silence the audience into a hush. The highest 
deo-ree of energy is probably inconsistent with beauty or 
melody. Hence, in Mr. Choate's extreme energies of the 
final argument, he lost in mere agreeableness what he 
gained in striking power. In this he was not altogether 
sino-ular. Eichard Lalor Shiel and Grattan, the great 
Irish orators, both of them, in their impassioned mo- 
ments, spoke in a hoarse shriek or scream. Mr. Choate 
often absolutely choked out his highest notes with a sort 



15f) REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 

of smofhered scream ; but in examining the witnesses, his 
rich voice was allowed to exhibit much of its variety, and 
all of its resonancy. 

To the professional observer the progress of the case up 
to the end of the testimony was as interesting as any of 
Mr. Choate's exhibitions of talent ; his whole forensic strat- 
egy, and his close tactics, were so fine. But it was when 
at last the evidence was all in, the adversary's argument 
closed (if Choate was for plaintiff), and all done but his 
own closing argument — then it was that expectation stood 
on tiptoe ; — then there was the running together, the ac- 
companying crowd, the grand hush of applauding atten- 
tion, the whole array of accompaniments of which Cicero 
speaks, when the eloquent counselor occupies the scene 
which he makes splendid, and possesses as his own. 

On these occasions Choate would always try to contrive 
to end the business of the case at the close of a dav ; so 
that he might have the night of rest, and an early morn- 
ing of preparation before his closing argument. If, how 
ever, it became necessary, he would trust to no early morn- 
ing preparations, but would sit up all night to conclude 
and perfect his preparation. Thus, by this exhaustive 
care well armed and appointed, punctually at the open- 
ing of the Court, the crowd would see him to their great 
delight, come rolling into the court room ; his plethoric 
green bag in his hand, stuifed to its utmost capacit}^, very 
likely a buff-colored law book under his arm, his neck all 
bundled up in a tippet like the whole of a fleece swathed 
round it, and his body covered with different colored coats. 
In latet- years he will be well remembered as always wear- 
ing outside of all a strange-looking gray, coarse, weather- 
stained coat, which slipped on and off easily. Under this 
were the ranks of its allies. Thus, on the morning of ar- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 157 

gument, he would serpentine into his seat, with eyes cast 
down, and a deprecating look. Arrived at his little table, 
one coat, and })erhaps two, would come off; and during 
the few moments of preliminary waiting, he would sit 
there, looking as restless, nervous, and wretched as a man 
on a scaffold momentarily expecting the drop to fdl under 
him. His cheeks told his internal excitement, by the 
darker shades of their coffee-colored hue, and his deep eyes 
looked spectral in the earnestness of his thought ; while con- 
stantly his long, bony fingers were tossing up his locks 
of jet, as if his head burned for more ventilation. 

At last, the crier has called, the jurymen are in their 
seats, and the Court gives the signal of readiness to hear. 
With no fuss, but with decision, the combatant strips for 
the work by tumbling off another coat or two ; slowly he 
rises, pushes his table a little back, clears a space' hardly 
large enough for the skirts of his coat to swing round in, 
and with an unfailing bow to the judge, utters his " May 
it please your Honor, and Gentlemen of the jury." 

In my inexperience, I used to wonder, at iirst, that he 
iid not have a large space cleared for him in front of his 
place, appropriate to the mighty effort which all anticipated 
from him. But herein was his policy. He deprecated any 
thing which should seem to the jury as if he contemplated 
a grand attack upon them. On the contrary, when at last 
he opened his mouth to them, he began in a low conversa- 
tional tone with a remark or two which dispelled all ap- 
prehension, and put him and them at once on a familiar, 
and for the purpose of the case, fraternal footing — " I 
think, Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen, you will be all very 
glad with me that we are getting to the end of this tedious 
investigation." Then he often went on by complimenting 
them upon the " never-failing kindness" of their patient 



158 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

attention thus far ; and hoped they would only " from a 
sense of duty" go with him to the end. Having recnlisted 
their feehngs for him, he did not neglect to notice " the 
benignity of the Bench/' and with calm progress, in a few 
moments he would seize their entire attention, and glide 
upward into a current of eloquence as he opened what he 
called the general " outside vieio of the case." Tliis pre- 
liminary "outside view" of his, was a sort of overture played 
before the opera ; and hinting at every air and chorus which 
would be played in the whole course of the effort. This, 
his overture, was a vague idealized passionate view of his 
side of the whole case, touching every general prejudice or 
passion which favored his cause, grouping the most telling 
of his facts- in hasty allusion, and giving in rough outline 
the main idea upon which he relied and to which he wished 
the mind of the jury to turn. This " outside view" was 
not unfrequently the most eloquent and captivating section 
of his whole work ; crowded as it was with every allusion 
calculated to stir or to propitiate, catching every ray of 
light which he saw beaming from the case, and concen- 
trating it in the burning focus of one single and simple and 
central view of all the confused masses of detail to which 
the attention of the jury had been for hours or days directed. 
On this first strike, he greatly relied for conquering his 
jury. He often said to me, that the first moments were 
the great moments for the advocate. Then, said he, the 
, attention is all on the alert, the ears are quicker, the mind 
receptive. People think they ought to go on gently, till, 
somewhere about the middle of their talk, they will put 
forth all their power. But this is a sad mistake. At the 
beginning, the jury are all eager to know what you are 
>-oing to say, what the strength of your case is. They 
don't go into details and follow you critically all along ; 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 159 

they try to get hold of your leading notion, and lump it 
aU up. At the outset, then, you want to strike into their 
minds what they want — a good solid general view of your 
case ; and let them think over that for a good while." 
" If," said he, emphatically, " you havn't got hold of them, 
got their convictions at least open, in your first half hour or 
hour, you will never get at them at all." 

In accordance with this theory, — which was so original 
and so contrary to all his classic masters of Antiquity, — he 
threw himself into this mellifluous and mighty overture 
with the whole thunder of his genius. This was his first 
gi'and assault in storming the Malakoflf which often towered 
before him in the resolute brows of the untemfied Twelve. 
" Try this young captain," he said once, imploringly, " as 
you would try your own sailor-boy son, the boy with 
the blue jacket and the bright -eyes ; try him, leaning 
not weakly to mercy, but for God's sake not leaning 
away from mercy." Or again, as he said in a civil case, 
" Throw around this vessel your protecting arms, for the 
commerce of our America goes round the world under her 
radiant ensign. It's a Yankee ship and a Yankee crew. • 
I've too much respect for the forecastle of my country to 
credit this monstrous story (relied on by the other side). 
He ! this man ! lay the bones of his vessel bleaching on 
the beach ! He'd have taken his gallant little craft in his 
arms first and borne her to the ends of the earth." Or 
once more, "I can not disguise from myself the apjirehen- 
sion that this man is having really a second jeopardy of his 
life and honor. Eemember, gentlemen, how sacred, how 
august your office is. You will guard him, I know, against 
this strange peril in an Anglo-Saxon land — the grievous 
wrong of a second trial for the same ofiense !" 

It has always been the talk of the Bar that cases are 



160 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 



"won or lost long before the argument. And undoubtedly 
the generalship of the case in its progress to argument is 
of vast consequence. So is strategy in war indispensable ; 
but of what avail would have been the strategy which pre- 
ceded Solferino, without the tactics and the valor of that 
whole summer's day of fight ? Judges, choked with law 
learning, but devoid of all enthusiasm, and jurymen, wise 
in their own conceit, have entertained the belief that they 
really decided Choate's cases hefoxQ the argument. But it 
was all a mistake. Consciously or unconsciously, they were 
made to change front. It is not probable that Choate often 
in his whole lifetime rose to address a jury already resolved 
to give his side their verdict. Yet it is certain that he did 
get their verdict, in by far the greater proportion of his 
cases ; therefore, of course, he had changed, had conquered 
them. But that first hour was the entering wedge of his 
attack. Rarely in the whole length of his appeal did he 
rise with more resolute splendor than in that first burst ; 
that first outbreak of power in which he used to turn so 
ashy pale, and hurl his argument home, in solid intense 
mass that crashed upon the ear. After that climax, his 
high-wrought ecstasy dropped again into the familiar level 
of his speaking. He had told his story; he had dashed his 
view into their minds with all the illuminating and exag- 
gerating lightnings of his portentous passion. Now, he 
addressed himself to details, to the business of unfolding, 
a])plying, and bringing up the evidence in support of his 
theory of the case. 

It has been said by an able authority, himself a suc- 
cessful lawyer, that " to succeed as a nisi prius lawyer does 
not require the highest order of genius, if indeed they are 
compatible. It requires a certain commonplaceness of mind 
and pliancy of temperament and littleness of topic and ver- 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. IGl 

bosity of remark, to which the great mind with difficulty 
stoops, unless disciplined by hard necessity and laborious 
toil. The jury advocate must, to a certain extent, be a 
luo-o-ler, if not a mountebank and a trickster. Strangest 
specimens of human intelligence sometimes come together 
even in our metropolitan jury boxes. The greatest triumph 
of a lawyer must ever be to suit himself to his jury, to sur- 
mount their whims, and to avail himself of their preju- 
dices." But the same authority goes on to observe with 
equal truth, " Of all these little arts, as well as the noble 
science of the forum, Kufus Choate has been a diligent 
student." 

It is very true that he mastered all the little tricks 
and little topics, as well as the grand thoughts and logical 
combinations by which victories are won upon forensic 
fields. As he had studied his jury till he knew them every 
one, so he would say something to hit every one. To his 
sharpened vision their faces were as glass. He read their 
souls through that glass. And as reading their souls, he 
proceeded to attack them, he realized the picture of him in 
his full action, drawn in words by one who must have known 
him well ; a description so pertinent and good that it can 
not be bettered. " While pleading, his eye flashes, as it turns 
rapidly from the court to the jury, and the jury to the court; 
ever remarking, with intuitive sagacity, the slightest traces 
of emotion or thought in the eye, lip, face, position, or 
movement of the judge — ever reading the soul revealed to 
him, perhaps to him alone, and comprehended by tliat mys- 
terious sympathy which unites the orator and auditor, as 
by an electric atmosphere through which thoughts and feel- 
ings pass and repass in silence but in power, Choate is aware, 
with the certainty of genius and the rapidity of instinct, 
of the effect he has produced upon the judge, whose slight- 



162 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

est word, he knows, is weightier than the eloquence of coun- 
sel ; and at the first slight intimation of dissent, rapidly, 
but almost imperceptibly, modifies, limits, and explains his 
idea, until he feels the concert of mental symjDathy between 
mind and mind ; and then like a steed checked into noble 
action, or a river rising to burst over its barriers, with his 
mind elevated and excited by opposition, he discourses to 
the jury logic, eloquence and poetry, in tones that linger in 
the memory like the parting sound of a cathedral bell, or 
the dying note of an organ. His voice is deep, musical, 
sad. Thrilling it can be as a fife, but it has often a plain- 
tive cadence, as though his soul mourned amid the loud 
and angry tumults of the forum, for the quiet grove of the 
Academy, or in these evil times sighed at the thought of 
those charms and virtues which we dare conceive in boy- 
hood, and pursue as men — the unreached paradise of our 
despair." 

His " acting" during the argument, both in his own 
and during the adverse argument, was consummate. He 
would state law and stretch law to the jury to the utmost 
limit to which the court would suffer him to go without 
stopping him. If at last interrupted by the judge, he. 
would turn round, still talking in a sort of moderate 
undertone which rendered the judge's tone inaudible to 
everybody but him ; but instantly catching the idea as he 
saw it in the judicial mind, he would repeat his own j^rop- 
osition in different language, shading it so imperceptibly 
that, for a moment after, the judge could not tell whether 
he had yielded or not ; then turning with a gratified look 
to the jury, who had heard hardly a word of the colloquy, 
he would say, '• I have the honor to be in entire accordance 
with the Court." If the judge was still dissatisfied, and 
ventured again to interrupt him, he never chafed, but 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 163 

changed liis statement again ; and if driven to abandon it, 
lie would do so in such a manner that no one but the 
Judge could see that he had been forced to give up his 
position ; and if that very judge did not keep a bright 
lookout, it would not be very long ere the dexterous advo- 
cate would w^ind round once more to his obnoxious propo- 
sitions, and display them again in strange but substan- 
tially similar language. 

He never would allow the jury to jjerceive him at issue 
with the Bench. Whatever the judicial interruption might 
be, and no matter how often repeated, he was always good 
tempered ; yielding when he could not help it, but always 
parrying or dodging the blow of seeming to be "corrected" 
by the court. Let the judge say what he might, he would 
say, " Yes, your Honor," "Exactly," "Just so," " Precisely 
what I was having the honor to remark." If the interrup- 
tion was not too adverse, he would often contrive to turn 
it into what w^iuld actually appear to the jury a judicial 
endorsement of his views. 

Sometimes he would evade a shot from the Court by his 
wit. Thus in a dangerous case, where the very able Judge 
of the United States District Court was holding the term, 
Choate, in the aro-ument, alluded to certain rumors as set 
afloat by a party's enemies. " You mustn't assume that, 
Mr. Choate ; there's no evidence that he has enemies," 
interrupted the Court. " He's in large business," said 
Choate, " and must have made foes." " There's no evi- 
de7ice," replied the judge, " that he's in business. He's a 
physician." " Well, then," replied Choate instantly, with 
a roguish smile, " he's a physician, and the friends of the 
people he's killed by his practice are his enemies." Peals 
of laughter follow^ed this exploit of witty logic, in which 
the judge heartily joined, and, amid all the noise and con- 



164 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

fusion, he was able to get on with his argument still un- 
corrected. 

Whenever he had occasion, in his address to the Jury, 
to speak on law sti-ictly, independent of fact, he always 
turned to the Court, as if that judge before him must be 
the fountain of all strictly legal learning. 

On matters of law he always spoke, therefore, with great 
submission to the Bench. This was very wise. Judges are 
always, especially with us, where the jury engross so much 
of the deciding power, jealous of their prerogative ; and 
matters of law should never be alluded to without refer- 
ence to the court. 

He spoke, during his whole argument, from a ponder- 
ous pile of manuscript scribbled and scrawled over, and 
crossed and cris-crossed, as if it were a stray ream of paper 
over which a nest of spiders had escaped from an inkstand. 
This he termed his " brief" As it was all written in his 
own inscrutable hand, no one was ever let into the mvs- 
teries of its entire contents. There it was, riddled with 
lines and marks of emphasis and obliterations, and pieces 
wafered on, all in one tangled, magnificent maze. That 
and his signature justified fully the caricature descrijD- 
tion of a v»'ag : " The autograph of Mr. Choate some- 
what resembles the map of Ohio, and looks like a piece of 
crayon sketching done in the dark with a three-pronged 
fork. His hand- writing can not be deciphered without the 
aid of a pair of compasses and a quadrant." This brief 
thus written, was probably a perfect Variety Shop of 
intellectual wares. It was not the notes he had taken 
during the trial, but was digested and deduced from them. 
It probably, to his eyes, beamed with light and burning 
though scattered thoughts which he had jotted down 
during the trial. But though he took up in his hand, as 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 165 

he went on, sheet after sheet of this manuscript, yet he 
rarely seemed to look at it witli any but the most casual 
glance ; and often he would go on for half an hour without 
referring to it at all ; then he would turn over and lay 
down twenty pages of it, to find the place to which he had 
an-ived. It all seemed to be lying in his mind. Indeed, 
he has told me, with approbation, of the way Alexander 
Hamilton prejjared his argument in the great case in New 
York which settled their law of libel. He wrote it all out 
the night before, and then deliberately tore it up. Mr. 
Choate, I am satisfied, might have argued his case in most 
instances if his brief had been torn up or stolen. He had 
a marvelous memory. One effort of composition and of 
committing to paper, seemed to write it also inefiaceably on 
his brain. 

I have spoken of his treatment of inteiTuptions by the 
judge. To an adversary interruj^ting him, he was always 
ready to reply, and he bore down as hard as he could upon 
him. An interruption from that quarter always chafed 
him ; and he resented it in every way, except by impatience. 
Here his good management and quickness was apparent. 
Often the counsel interruj^ted under a misapprehension of 
the precise point Choate was aiming at ; still more often 
from mistake as to the evidence ; for Choate himself rarely 
was in error in his evidence. He heightened and exag- 
gerated evidence, but never falsified it. But whether well 
or ill founded, an interruption to his fiery course galled and 
worried him. The sympathy of a jury is always, however, 
naturally with the man speaking, not with the man who 
stojis him ; and Choate not only contrived to prevent the 
adversary from making any thing out of his attempted cor- 
rection, but generally contrived to make a positive gain for 
himself ; for he made the jury see, without his saying so, 



166 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

what a grievance lie felt it to be, to be thus checked in mid 
career ; and unless the point made by the obstruction was 
an exceedingly good one, the sympathy was all for Choate. 
If the interruption was on Evidence, Choate was generally 
either right, or so nearly so that nobody could tell exactly 
whether he was or no. If counsel threw in a witticism at 
his expense, Choate was instantly ready with an apt retort 
— generally courteous, but often killing ; for the move- 
ments of his mind were electric flashes. 

Sometimes during an attempted interruption, unless it 
was undertaken with coolness and decision, he would go 
right on talking, as if he didn't hear or care for the call 
made upon him, and utterly preventing the jury from ap- 
prehending the point attempted to be made by his enemy. 
Frequently this was because he did not want the jury to 
find their minds diverted from what he himself was endeav- 
oring to say ; not because he feared that he would prove to 
be wrong. If the adversary went on, he would get directly 
between him and the Jury, his broad shoulders seeming to 
widen like a wall between them, and raising his voice in a 
paroxysm of clamor, would crush or drown the compara- 
tively timid foe. But if still resolutely, the correction was 
insisted on, he would seem to assume by his words that of 
course he must be right, and the hindrance was a trick, an 
impertinence, and a wi'ong. " One at a time," he would 
say. " Don't talk so fast." " I have the floor." " I pro- 
pose to argue my case." " Will my brother allow me to 
argue my case ?" Or again, when the cloud raised by the 
interruption was a little cleared up, he would say, with a 
fine promptness, " These repeated interruptions only afford 
me a new opportunity to present my impregnable case. 
It will tire you. Gentlemen of the Jury ; but my brother's 
interposition renders it necessary." Or sometimes he would 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 167 

say, if lie was for plaintiif and closing, and tlie adversary- 
was very persistent and troublesome, " If you propose to 
argue your whole case over again, I will submit it to the 
Court, whether you shall be suffered to ;" or again, " I know 
that I am right. I have most carefully collated my exi- 
dence last night and this morning. I know I am right ;" 
and then, adroitly, " I do not object to these interruptions 
except for the time they take ;" as if it were utterly impos- 
sible, even if they were well founded, that they could be 
good for any thing, or able to help so bad a case as the ad- 
versary's. 

There was one cool, imperturbable lawyer of the Suf- 
folk Bar who was, I always thought, a goad in his side 
when thev were hostile. He was as cool and smooth as 
marble ; he could not be put down, and his whole manner 
was as superciliously self-conceited as it was possible to be 
and not be impertinent. It was only manner, though, for 
he was a gentleman at heart ; but he lacerated Choate. He 
would rise so deliberately in the midst of one of Choate's 
torrid climaxes, when he was storming and fuming and 
getting the Jury under complete subjection, and with a 
manner so sublimely certain, stop this express train of fer- 
vid splendor ; and then state his objection so coolly and so 
exactly — for he had the great power of statement — adjust- 
ino- his eve-dasses all the while, with a satirical half-sneer 
on his hard and arrogant lip. It was like the spear of the 
hunter, in the sides of the plunging and racing beast of the 
forest. Sometimes Choate could shake him off, but rarely. 
Generally he had to grapple with him ; and then the fire 
would flash into his eyes, as he would take hold of him ; 
and come down with some scathing repartee, or do some 
queer thing, which would set the whole house in a roar. 
Once I saw him, when a third time challenged thus by 



168 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

this counselor, come to a dead stop, and making as much 
fuss as possible, to mark it to the Jury, said he, " If my 
Brother proposes to argue for his client a little more, I will 
sit down and wait." And sit down he did ; but instantly 
getting up again, he began to put on several of his coats ; 
diving into them with a parade of energy in stopping, and 
a distressed look, as much as to say, " this unnecessary de- 
lay is prodigious, but it is all for his sake — ^he is the cul- 
prit cause" — so that he got the Bar into a tumult of mirth. 
Meantime, " unshaken, unseduced, unterrified," the cause 
of all this exhibition had been steadily fixing his eye-glass 
on the bridge of his nose, and calling the attention of the 
Court to the evidence ; which, he insisted upon it, was mis- 
stated. On this occasion, either Choate really was wrong, 
or he chose to abandon the particular j)iece of evidence in 
order to make a great point ; for he immediately rose and 
began to strip again ; saying, in a tone wliich multiplied the 
laughing tumult, " Oh, is that all ? Why, what a trille ! 
rU give that point up, and let my Brother have it just as 
he's a mind to." It may be imagined, upon this ending of 
so great a fuss, which party gained the most by the inter- 
lude. 

It was in allusion to this appearance of absolute self- 
satisfaction which the gentleman who was the lawyer in 
this case uniformly displayed, that a story was for a long 
time current at the Bar, whose wit was attributed to 
Choate. For it was said, that some one met Mr. Choate 
late one afternoon revolving round the Boston Common, 
while, crossing it diagonally at the same time, was the 
aforesaid counselor, moving with i)lacid satisfaction. 
"What do you think our friend there is thinking of.^" 
said the third party to Mr. Clioate. " Well, I should 
imagine," replied Choate, speaking slowly — " I should 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 169 

imagine, from Ms air and manner, that he could be think- 
ing, at this moment, of nothing else but the question, 
whether Grod made him, or he made God." This story 
ran current in Court Street for a long time. I do not 
vouch for its truth, but probably there are many who 
would. 

Sometimes Choate had the judge fairly and flatly on his 
side in his argument of a cause, and received aid and com- 
fort from him. This was not often, but when it was so, 
he made a vast parade of it. No Median or Persian fiat was 
ever more decisive than this intimation of judicial appro- 
bation ; as he then represented it to the jury. 

Yet, on the other hand, when Court, counsel, fact, 
every thing was against him, and when any other man 
woukl have been utterly floored and extinguished for the 
moment by the shock of an unfortunate misstep in argu- 
ment, Choate stood immovable. His gloomy face would 
grow paler, not gloomier ; but he would get out of the 
difficulty with unabashed effrontery and unfailing resource. 
One of these scenes, which I happened to witness, was so 
characteristic that I sketched it for a newspaper at the 
time as follows : 

" A curious mischance happened to Mr. Choate on 
AVednesday, in the trial of his insurance cause, with Mr. 
Hillard on the other side. He had been arguing with un- 
usual vehemence and labor that the other side didn't dare 
ask their witnesses about the stowing and arrangement 
of vessels loaded with grain, as respects sea worthiness, 
although they made a great show of asking them about 
vessels generally. ' Name one witness,' he thundered out 
over the meek head of Mr. Hillard, the opposite counsel ; 
' Name one. I should like to hear of one to whom they ask 
the question as to grain laden vessels.' Mr. Hillard quietly 



170 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

said, ' Captain testified in answer to inquiry upon 

that very point.' ' Impossible/ said Mr. Choate ; ' I care- 
fully collated my notes of evidence last night, and I know 
there isn't one.' After this brief but emphatic denial, he 
was rushing on in the fiery tide of his usual lightning-like 
style of advocacy, when he was stopped by Mr. Hillard's 
quietly appealing to the Court as to the truth of his having 
named one witness who swore directly in the teeth of what 
Mr. Choate was saying. The advocate stopped in mid 
career, evidently imjDatient as a racer curbed, to hear the 
J udge ; who, turning to his minutes, read in plain language 
i\\(d statement of the witness as expressing the closest and 
most deliberate opinion expressly with regard to grain ves- 
sels. A general titter began to prevail, and ' what the 
S2)eaker could say now,' was the universal feeling ; pausing 
a moment, and giving that peculiarly solemn expression of 
face which those who are familiar with him so well recog- 
nize, the great advocate broke the silence by the simple 
question, twice repeated, as if to the judge, but really to 
the jury, 'Does that witness say lioiv many grain vessels 
his experience embraces ; hoio many, is the important 
point. I am arguing that the experience of persons experi- 
enced cliiefly in grain vessels is not, and dare not be, asked 
by the other side ;' and saying this with great soberness and 
without a muscle of his rigid features changing, he turned 
the attention of the jury ; and rapidly rushing into another 
part of the argument, it was found that he had led them 
and the minds of the auditors off from the desperately bad 
break in the link of his argument, before they had time to 
decide whether it really was true that Mr. Choate had 
fallen into a blunder not more overwhelming than it was 
laughable. Anybody else, after such a preceding flourish of 
trumpets, to have been so floored, would have been utterly 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 171 

extinguished by the unanimous mirth of Bench and Bar. 
It is due, however, to Mr. Choate to say that he very 
rarely makes such a trip or is so put to his trumps to re- 
cover himself." 

If he was intciTupted in an unimportant point — unless 
he thought it would distract the jury from attending — he 
would make much parade of acquiescence. " I desire to he 
ftiir. I ISelieve you are right, sir — quite right. I submit 
to my Brother's correction," he would say. To be cor- 
rected, never troubled him merely because he was proud of 
being right. He was troubled only because he was afraid 
of its effect on the jury. He was far, very far above the 
small vanity so cons})icuous in his gi-eat rival for American 
forensic fame, William Pinkney. Pinkney would even 
swell and domineer if he w^as disputed as to an authority 
which he quoted in respect merely to its position on the 
page. He said to the Supreme Court of the United States 
un such an occasion, " Send for the book ; and now, before 
I open it, I will tell your Honors not only the exact author- 
ity, but the exact place of the authority as it stands on 
the page, and the page itself with equal exactness." The 
book was brought, and it was all even so. But Choate 
never would have done this. He would have preferred 
even to appear in the wrong about an unimportant point, 
if only to save a brother lawyer from mortification. He 
had hardly any pride of opinion. He cared for victory, not 
opinion. 

But I have seen him, when attention was diverted from 
the current of his talk to the Jury by an unseemly dis- 
turbance of an outsider, seem very savage and stormy. 
Once, in a great Patent case, the opposite party to the 
suit, an elderly man, sat some little distance behind him 
with his counsel. During all Choate's unusually brilliant 



172 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

argument — for the achievements of great inventors always 
inspired him — this adverse gentleman kept up a constant 
but subdued derisive chuckle ; and at length, at a grand 
burst of enthusiasm and spasm of gesture in the advocate, 
he laughed quite audibly. Choate was just sweeping his 
doubled fist about his head, his eyes glancing flame, and 
screaming out, " I tell you, Grentlemen of the Jury, as the 
great Italian artist said, glowing with the consciousness of 
commensurate genius, ' We also are painters' " — when he 
heard the laugh. Hardly finishing his sentence, he turned 
directly upon the chuckling enemy Avith both fists clenched 
and as much fgJit in his face as was ever seen there ; he 
advanced upon him two or three steps scowling terribly, 
till he fiiirly quailed under the broadside of his fierce 
glance. " Sir," said he, in slow, measured words, every 
syllable of which was a volley, " let him laugh loho ivins." 
The man seemed to shrivel up under the fire and the 
glance. There was no more outside laughter in that case, 
and — Choate loon. 

When he was for the defendant, and therefore made the 
fiist of the closing arguments, he was quite fair about in- 
terrupting the other side in their final argument. But 
when he was in this position of speaking first, he always 
reminded his adversary if he undertook to correct him, 
that he had the close upon him ; and he very much pre- 
ferred to have his errors corrected in the closing argument, 
and not by frequent interruption. He probably knew it 
was not likely the counsel would ever recollect it after- 
wards, or, if he did, would present it as forcibly as it could 
be put at that instant. But if the ojjponent was too wary, 
and wanted the Court to see the correction made now , 
Choate would sigh out with a tone of deprecating sadness, 
" I have no chance to reply on him! and my brother is de- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 173 

temiiiicd that my unhappy client shall not even have his 
case fairly presented." 

While the adversary was closing upon him, he always sat 
by and watched him during all the address. Although his 
own active part was done, yet he never left to his junior 
the task of following the current of the enemy's state- 
ment. Wrapped uj) in his coats, he sat still, apparently 
with no solicitude ; never indulging in the cheajD trick of 
belittleing the adverse argument by sneering or smiling 
contemptuously. He seemed to assume, by his manner, 
that although this was an able argument which they were 
now hearing, yet he had placed his own case so beyond the 
reach of danger that he could listen to it unmoved. If he 
interrupted, he did it decidedly, but modestly. And if 
the opponent grew restive, as a half-timid advocate gen- 
erally will, he would mutter, audibly, he " supjjosed his 
brother w^ished to get the evidence right." As much as to 
say, that if he didn't wish him to correct the en'or it would 
be the Jurv's and the Court's loss, not Mr. Choate's. 

The Material of tliis great advocate's argument, was a 
mysterious consolidation of the most dogmatic and positive 
assertion, the closest logic, the dryest law, the most glit- 
tering poetry, the most convulsive humor, fired up by an 
enthusiasm uninterrupted and contagious. In the first 
j)lace, he constantly put himself into the jury-box, as it 
were ; that is, he constantly made a sort of confidant of 
each juryman. He abounded in expressions like these : 
" Now, Mr. Foreman, what should you think of such a 
proposition ?" " You see, gentlemen, here's the exact 
pinch ;" or, " I thought I wouldn't read all this letter to 
you ; but perhaps it would be fair, and you'd like to hear 
it." " I want you to explore these letters with me, for I 
think that" — running his eyes along their faces with a very 



174 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

significant look of mischief — " I think that it ivill 2)ay." 
All sorts of familiar colloqiiialisins were ready at his hand, 
and he used them freely; shooting them across the pictur- 
esque web of his rich and recondite language and allusion. 

Scarlett, Lord Abinger, was altogether the greatest jury 
advocate in England of modern times ; as far as regards the 
mere winning of cases, and gaining of juries. He addressed 
them in a very simple, easy, confidential sort of a way, 
never rising above a conversational tone. He would ridi- 
cule an overwhelming case out of Court. He would rise in 
the face of a perfectly conclusive showing on the other side, 
and with unblushing effrontery say, " Why, gentlemen, my 
case is clear ; you are not to be deceived by this labored and 
specious pleading on the other side." Inasmuch as he 
leveled himself right down to each juryman, he flattered 
and won them ; and, it was said, he won because there 
were twelve Sir James Scarletts in the box. 

Although Choate began his great arguments in a con- 
versational way, and had a basis of conversational manner 
in all he said, yet it was by a very different style of ad- 
dress from Scarlett that he contrived to produce the same 
result of getting himself " into the box." But, certainly, 
he did often produce the result of making the individual 
Jurymen feel as though he was sitting with them, man to 
man, face to face, and talking it over. Intermingled with 
all his elevated literary topic in argument, there was so 
much that was homely, so much that was direct, so much 
that took right hold of the bosoms and business of men, 
and it was given to them in such a friendly and fraternal 
spirit, that if there were not twelve Eufus Choates in the 
box, there was something better — a Rufus Choate in front 
of them, who seemed a most influential and advising friend 
of their Jury family. 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 175 

In his whole jury appeal, there was nothing more won- 
derful to the professional eye than his speech directly upon 
the Evidence, and his comment on the Witnesses. Neither 
his oriental ecstacy of eloquence, his. remorseless grasp of 
the whole mass of detail, his consummate learning in the 
law, all which were displayed here, in any degree surpassed 
his transcendent talent for marshaling the evidence, and 
discussing the witnesses. 

He had every part and parcel of the Evidence in his 
mind, and knew its precise relation and bearing ; then lie 
would take the most trifling and unimportant single cir- 
cumstance which had been sworn to, and putting this and 
that together, and revolving every minute particle of tes- 
timony a long time, and with vast variety of phrase and 
illustration, and interweaving and piecing out with little 
scraps of inference and fact, he managed to weave and 
plaster together a firm foundation, where no human being 
but he would ever have found a footing. Then in weaving 
and massing together these threads of facts, he held stead- 
fiistly before him ever the grand central figure upon which 
they were to fit — the hub around which all were to revolve 
— the theory upon which his whole case went. He never 
had, like some weak-minded advocates, several theories ; 
each to bo used in case of need in any new pinch of the 
case ; he had one theory — one central, commanding theory 
— and all the evidence squared and dovetailed into and 
upon this one ruling center, which commanded like a sen- 
tinel every particular and every portion of the whole 
variegated field. 

And against the view or the successive propositions 
which he presented, he always asserted there was not " the 
shadow of a shade of testimony ;" he would repeat often, 
and with vehement positiveness, such expressions as " There 



176 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

is not a scrap of evidence which negatives this ; no, gentle- 
men, not a scintilla of e^'idence." " Scrap" and " scintilla" 
were famous words of his, as applied to evidence. 

He exhibited gi-eat power of expanding and magnifying 
a little bit of evidence into importance, by dividing it and 
subdividing it and talking on each head. If, for example, 
his proj)osition is something which, simply said, would not 
be very impressive, but he has no better ammunition, he 
talks about its belonirings and incidental considerations 
and hypothesis and details ; till having enforced these so as 
to make an impression, doubtful, perhaps, but favorable, 
he comes by successive risings to the real gist and weight 
of the matter, by a slowly-reached climax. The art on 
which Cicero lavs much stress, namelv, that of exag-o-erat- 
ing, or, on the other hand, of belittleing and extenuat- 
ing the weio;ht of testimonv, he wielded most skillfullv ; 
and displayed wonderful fertility and invention in the ex- 
hibition. 

If there were several considerations which, when taken 
independently, would not be very forcible, he would throw 
them in as reasons why, if nothing else, " the burden of 
proof" already lying on the other side, should be severely 
enforced and exacted. 

Sometimes he would make a great parade and repetition 
and enforcement of a simple and comparatively unimportant 
item ; thus, in a Patent case, the elementary idea that one 
inventor shall not monopolize all invention, I heard him 
repeat in different words, successively, six times. Again, I 
remember a single short sentence of four or five words upon 
which he wished to fasten the jury's mind ; he repeated it 
right over and over three times ; laying the emphasis each 
time on the word succeeding the one he had before em- 
phasized. 



REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 177 

His analysis and subtle refinement in discriminations 
was marveloiisly acute ; he so analyzed and refined, as 
almost to re-create ; and the clearness and cogency with 
which he made these minute and shadowy differences plain 
to the most ordinary apprehension, was by no means the 
least wonderful of his accomplishments. On the other 
hand, he was equally potent in seeing through, and break- 
ing down the opponent's nicely accumulated analogies. 

In a Power Loom Patent case, the adversary had ar<!;ued 
that because several delicate i)arts of the rival machines 
looked like each other, their original ideas were similar, 
and therefore there was an infringement. "As soon," said 
Choate, ridiculing the model introduced to show this, " as 
soon, go to the graves of the buried dead, and taking a 
little dust from this one and a little dust from that one, 
present them on ])aper, and argue from their similarity a 
likeness of the bodies to which they belonged in life." 

In his whole management of the minute details of 
evidence I think it would be generally conceded by the ad- 
mirers of botli, that he was decidedly superior to Webster. 

Mingle in now with this masterly maneuvering of de- 
tails, constant appeals to sympathetic feelings ; constant 
touches upon all that lies latent in man's nature of 
warmth and the holy traditions of youth ; constant 
addresses to the waste of passions that lie grand and 
gloomy on all but the most shallow souls ; and you can 
form some conception of that j)ortentous power which he 
wielded ; and which made him, as the learned Professor 
Greenleaf said, before a Jury, " more terrible than Webster." 

His discussion of the Witnesses themselves personally, 
was striking, cunning, convincing. If he wished to break 
a witness in the confidence of the jury, he made no direct 

assault upon him ; that would have been a bungling and 

8* 



178 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

often an ineffectual proceeding. No, he described the wit- 
ness generally, remarking, perhaps, that it was of very 
little consequence whether he was believed or not ; but 
then he would go on to insinuate rather than express a 
thousand disparagements. These were often well deserved, 
but they would not have taken effect, unless uttered 
adroitly and rather indirectly. All through this discussion 
of the comparative merits of the rival witnesses on both 
sides, especially if they contradicted each other, he would 
exalt or overcolor his own witnesses, and undercolor the 
adversary's. " You could not fail to observe. Gentlemen of 
the Jury, the manliness, the manifest willingness, the 
straightforward story of our six witnesses to this point, 
all of them honorable men ;" " I do not wish to defraud 
my Brother of his witnesses' character, but one could hardly 
fail of observing their apparent indifference to the solemnity 
of their oath, their swiftness of reply when he questioned 
them, their slowness when we did." " I pass no judgment, 
but I put it to you whether you saw honesty written fairly 
on their foreheads." This line of observation was frequent, 
although the two rival bodies of witnesses were to the dis- 
interested spectator seemingly of equally fair manner. It 
is not probable that Mr. Choate ever in these instances 
deliberately proposed to blacken an innocent witnesses's 
character ; but he was so identified with his own side, that 
every thing adverse seemed to him discolored with evil, and 
he showed great rhetorical ability in disposing of witnesses 
without directly damning them. 

His speeches to the Jury abounded in the most dogmatic 
assertion ; before he had spoken fifteen minutes, he had, 
according to his own showing, utterly disposed of and an- 
nihilated his adversary's case ; again and again he had 
said, " This consideration puts an end to their case ;" yet 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 179 

he went on, although, as it would seem, sublimely conscious 
that the remaining six hours of his talk must be mere sur- 
plusage. His practice often exemplified the truth, that 
the mere statement boldly and confidently made, that your 
case is good, is influential with the jury ; but when he had 
piled up dogmatism and proof and passion all together, he 
would add, " But this is only half my case ; I go now to 
the main body of my proofs." 

He always spoke with a rapid and overpowering rush 
of words and thoughts. As he dashed on in liis argument, 
in pointing to and taking up papers, models, books ; in 
turning to the Judge or the Jury; in his under tones to his 
associate counsel ; in his whole mental or bodily movement ; 
there was prodigious velocity, yet perfect time and com- 
posure ; his mind, in fact, moved at this fearful rate natur- 
ally — it was as rapid as consistent with sanity. In the at- 
temjjt to keeep pace with him, reporters have often thrown 
down their pens in utter hopelessness ; in the same fruitless 
attempt to keep up with his own thought, his own pen 
would fly over the paper in a long wavy unintelligible line, 
which, after a week had elapsed, he could hardly decipher 
himself Some one said of him with great propriety, if the 
magnetic telegraph were affixed to his lips, the words would 
heap upon the wires. 

His enunciation was in a rapid and uninterrupted flow, 
and his sentences, though finished with the most perfect 
accuracy, were long and often involved ; and for this reason 
it would be difficult for any reporter to keep pace with him. 
But a still greater difficulty was in his power to magnetize 
his auditors, and make them oblivious of every thing else 
while the spell of his eloquence was upon them. The story 
of the short-hand writer who was employed to report one 
of his arguments is scarcely an exaggeration. Soon after 



180 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

the argument was commenced it is said he dropped his 
pencil, and remained gazing at the advocate till he had 
closed. When called to accomit for his neglect to make 
the report, he asked, " Who can report chain lightning ?" 
A grave lawyer who heard him for the first time when he 
delivered his address before the New England Society at 
New York, in which he uttered the famous expression, " a 
church without a Bishop, and a State without a King," re- 
marked that it was difierent in kind from any thing he 
ever heard before. " It was," said he, " a series of electric 
shocks, and Ave couldn't keep our seats. We kept clap- 
ping and cheering without being conscious of it." 

It seems strange that a mind so compact and compre- 
hensive as his was, should have expounded his views to the 
jury in arguments uniformly of great length. If any man 
could put fact, poetry, passion into condensed masses of 
sentences, he eminently could ; but he preferred to talk on 
and talk on, always, though, talking to the point. When 
you thought he had exhausted his theme, and exhausted 
himself, he would, as it were, recommence with the remark, 
" But, gentlemen, this is not half the strength of my argu- 
ment," Barely, however, if ever, did his jury get tired of him. 
I have known men say at the conclusion of three days' speak- 
ing by him, " Our only regret was that he stopped." Tliough 
he could cover an equally wide plane of philosophic specu- 
lation with Edmund Burke, yet he rarely, like him, laid 
himself open to the sarcasm, that he " went on refining 
when they thought of dining." But still it may be ques- 
tionable whether he did not speak too long. It resulted 
from his anxiety to cover every possible point, clear up or 
cloud every possible difficulty; and in doing so he pre- 
sumed upon great ignorance to start with in his Jury. 

AVhen Pinkney had argued a day in the United States 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 181 

Supreme Court on the simplest principles of elementary 
law, the Chief Justice blandly remarked to him as they were 
gathering together their papers for adjournment, " Mr. 
Pinkney, there are some things that the Supreme Court 
of the United States are presumed to know." Very few 
things indeed, however, did Rufus Choate assume that his 
jurors were presumed to know. 

His whole theory of argumentation was the exhaust- 
ive one; to exhaust every possible line of thought directly 
bearing on his theory. Webster, on the contrary, used to 
group and select the witnesses to whom he would allude, 
and on whom he relied ; he put their words into a single 
mass of testimony, and hurled it home in comparatively 
few^ sentences; — ^few, but thunderbolts. As he came on, all 
would be dark where Webster advanced, save as his bolts 
of thunder struck and illumined ; Choate, on the other 
hand, advanced wath a diversified but long array, which 
covered the heavens ; thunderbolts volleying, auroras play- 
ing, and sunlight, starlight, and gas light shooting across 
the scene in meteoric radiance. 

I do not think his audience in a Court room liad any 
perceptible effect on him in speaking; any more than a 
vast array of spectators to a grand battle would have in- 
fluence on the mind of the Generals in command ; he was 
fighting his battle ; and he thought not of observation, 
but of victory. In this how different he Avas from Erskine 
or Pinkney! But Choate lived in a region of thought im- 
measurably above vanity ; he was proud, — I have some- 
times thought him very proud, — but he never for an 
instant surrendered to self-consciousness or conceit. 

He often used his audience nevertheless ; but it was by 
moving them to demonstrations of applause or mirth, 
which should act involuntarily on the jury. We are all 



182 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

human, even when trying to be judicial; and the spectacle 
of a crowded court room manifestly delighted with a senti- 
ment, would send it home to the breasts of the Twelve with 
redoubled power. So he used his audience to deepen his 
impression ; they were the deep pedal which he pressed, 
when he wanted his instrument to strike the diapason of 
a mightier music. But their presence did not yield him 
any stimulus ; not into their eyes did he look for sympa- 
thetic homage ; into the Jury's eyes alone, he bent all his 
most passionate, most wooing, and stormiest glances. 

He always in his speaking not only talked to some 
specific verdict or point, but he also talked to some par- 
ticular person or persons. He said to me often, " This 
standing up and addressing a crowd vaguely, an undefined 
mass, nobody in particular, and wheeling on the heel, 
looking about from side to side, can not be the thing ; it 
is no better than standing up and fiddling." Therefore he 
always said, " Talk to somebody." Accordingly, in his 
own practice, he would stare down into the eyes of the 
gaping jury with a basilisk glare; and sometimes in a 
speech on the platform he would fix his eyes so intently 
on a person or squad of persons that it would be very 
marked. I have known him to turn his impassioned glance 
of fire on a front seat full of people, and rush forward to 
the edge of the stage as if he would transfix them with a 
gesture and a look; so that they absolutely started back 
from those frenzied eyes with a momentary terror. 

It would be well if public speakers would, in some 
degree, advert to this example. Ministers especially lose 
half their efiiciency by talking vaguely in the air, as if 
they were addressing shadows, not sinners. 

As will be seen in Mr. Choate's conversations hereafter, 
so also in his Addresses, his classics played a most impor- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 183 

tant part ; he would levy on his Greeks and Komans for 
illustration with much freedom ; hut he seemed to have the 
whole realm of Antiquity under fee to his mind; the words 
of the ancients were as much his own as the words of mod- 
erns. Under what instantaneous command he had the 
classic wealth of storj'^, and how felicitously he used it, 
will appear by the following anecdote related by an emi- 
nent politician who was present on the occasion of its oc- 
currence : — 

" In the winter of 1850, a large party was given in 
Washington, and many illustrious personages were pres- 
ent, who have since, like Mr. Choate, gone down to the 
grave amid the tears of their countrymen. The Senate, 
at that time worthy of the name, was well represented on 
this occasion of festivity, and the play and airy vivacity of 
the conversation, with ' the cups which cheer but not in- 
ebriate,' relaxed at intervals even senatorial dignity. 
During the evening the subject of ' Young America' was 
introduced, his waywardness, his extravagance, his igno- 
rance and presumption. Mr. Webster observed that he 
hoped the youth would soon come to his senses, and atone, 
by the correctness of his deportment, for his juvenile dis- 
sipation. At the same time he added that, in his opinion, 
the only efficient remedy for the vice and folly of the lad 
would be found in early religious training, and stricter 
parental restraint. Mr. Choate declared that he did not 
view the hair-brained youth in the same light with his 
illustrious friend ; that every age and country had, if not 
their ' Young America,' at least something worse. The 
character of Trajan, the best and j)urest of Roman emper- 
ors, said he, was unable, with all its virtue and splendor, 
to check the ' Young Italy' of that day. Our lads would 
seem to have sat for the picture which has been drawn of 



184 llEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

the Koman youths by the hand of one who seldom colored 
too highly : ' Statim sapiunt, statim sciunt omnia; nemi- 
nem verentur, imitanhtr neminem, atque vpsi sibi exempla 
sunt' — which, translated, reads thus : ' From their cradles 
they know all things, they understand all things ; they 
have no regard for any person whatever, high or low, rich 
or poor, religious or otherwise, and are themselves the only 
examples which they are disposed to follow.' Mr. Benton 
tliought the quotation too happy to be genuine, and de- 
manded the author. Mr. Choate, with the utmost good 
humor, replied that his legal habits had taught him the 
importance of citing no case without being able to give his 
authorities ; he called for the younger Pliny, and triumph- 
antly showed the passage, amid the admiration of that 
brilliant assembly, in the 23d letter of the 8th book of the 
younger Pliny ! Our informant remarks that the history 
of literature, perhaps, can not show an equally felicitous 
quotation," 

Myriads of examples might be cited of Mr. Choate's 
prompt fertility of classic illustration in Court. I remem- 
ber a Patent cause, where he was exhibiting a model of a 
ship to a jury. After exhausting the description of the 
parts, he stopped ; then glancing at the Foreman, he said 
quickly, " But why do I talk of these things so minutely 
to you ? it is like talking on ivar before Hannibal ;" an 
allusion, it will be seen, to a beautiful passage in Cicero's 
" De Oratore." 

He once commenced a legal address thus, " In the lan- 
guage of the Greek epigram, G-entlemen of the Jury," etc. 
What the Greek epigram was, that jury of hard-fisted fel- 
lows knew no more, than they knew what the stars were 
made of. 

In the famous Shaw Case vs. The Worcester Railroad, 



REMINISCENCES OF R-UFUS C HO ATE. 185 

one of the witnesses, named Colonel Rice, testified that the 
wagon containing the party who were struck hy the loco- 
motive, came on at a steady pace till close hy the track, 
where the horse stopped ; " Yes," said 'the witness, " the 
horse stopped; the horse thought" — "Wait a moment," 
broke in the rich voice of Mr. Choate, and rising, he ad- 
dressed the Bench, " May it please your Honor, Homer 
tells us in the ' Iliad' of the dogs' dreams ; but I prefer 
better authority than Colonel Rice's for the horse's thoughts. 
I object to the statement ;" and, amid much laughter, it 
was ruled out. 

He showed in his argument, when he closed a case, 
that, in the progress of the cause, nothing, not the slight- 
est thing, had escaped him. He had watched eveiy face in 
the panel ; he had watched the countenance of the Court ; 
he had watched the successive witnesses — every decided 
look, or tone or demonstration which any of these person- 
ages of tlie drama gave, he remembered. Many a juror 
has been astonished to hear liim in his argument, days 
after the occurrence, refer to an expression of satisfaction 
which he had given at a particular phase of the trial. So 
whatever slight signals the judge held out, of the way he 
meant to rule or the leaning of his feelings in any manner, 
was carefully noted by his unerring eye, and made use of, 
either in introducing evidence to meet it, or in argument 
to propitiate it. His mind vast, delicate and minute, held 
the whole case in distinct view, no matter how long it took, 
and fastened in turn upon every part of it — the hist(5ric, 
the personal, the legal aspects all alike — and grasped them 
all at will, touching them in their exact relations as a great 
master would touch with sure vision the manifold keys of 
a grand and complicated instrument. 

There was no shriek of passion, no keen thrust, no 



186 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

seeming digression, no splendid apostrophe that was not 
expressly meant for an ohject. It hit somebody, or meant 
something. Not a floral word, not a logical inference was 
uttered by him that did not tell somewhere. For a man 
of so much inflammation, this was marvelous. 

In a succeeding chapter will be found a critical descrip- 
tion of his Eloquence ; but one or two singularities peculiar 
to his Court room speaking may be mentioned here. He 
employed two extraordinary instruments of gesture — Ms 
nase and his heels ; as he closed an intense and long burst 
of passionate periods, he would straighten up before the 
jury, his head go back and erect itself like the crest of a 
serpent, and then he would draw in the whole volume of 
his breath through his large nose, with a noise heard all 
over the Court room ; and, singular to say, this strange 
noise, so far from being laughable, was most emphatic. 

As he stood there before them, with his dark Nonnan 
face, his thick curving eyebrows, his square-built frame 
and stature, and strong countenance, so adapted for tragic 
effect ; the French fire of a chivalric enthusiasm dancing in 
the eyes so deep with passion ; and looking reckless and 
defiant ; — as thus armed, he paused with a firm toss of his 
proud head backwards, and making this singular noise, 
seemed to snuff" the air with dilated nostril, he looked as 
beautiful and as formidable as the wild leopard of the 
jungle crouching for the deadly spring. Then, when he 
wished to double and redouble the force of his expression, 
he Avould close his sentence by coming down on his heels 
with a muscular rigidity, which absolutely would shake the 
whole Court room. 

In allusion to this, I remember hearing one of his 
aged antagonists begin his speech to the Jury by saying, 
•' I care not whether my brother Choate in his eloquence 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 187 

takes the roof off, or breaks the floor down, I shall go on 
to set out the evidence calmly, etc." 

Choate had also a queer way of shaking himself up, 
as it were, in the progress of a speech. If he found himself 
lacro-inff in ardor, he would give two or three tremendous 
emphases, accompanying them with a convulsive jerk of 
his whole body, which would seem to shake every bone in 
him in its socket, and every rag of clothing on him out of 
its place. Then, fired up by this stimulating spasm, like 
a fighter cheering for a charge, he would dash on with a 
wild barbaric ardor ; then came the moments in which he 
looked absolutely savage ; the tame man became a wild 
animal then. 

I have seen him almost transfigured in his appearance, 
and swept utterly out of the range of common thoughts. 
I do not think, at such moments, that for single instants 
he knew anybody, or took in with his eye any intelligent 
vision ; he was wrapped up and lost, as one in a trance. 

There is no doubt that great, impassioned, imaginative 
orators, are in their climax moments in a sort of trance 
state, a state of utter absorption of isolation from earthy 
scenes and spots ; such as the elder Booth, when he ivould 
not die in Richard III., but chased Eichmond out of the 
window of the theater ; or Mrs. Siddons, with her dress- 
ing room door open facing the stage between the acts, that 
the illusion of the scene might not for an instant pass off 
from sole j)Ossession of her mind. When Kean played 
Shylock, he was Shylock ; and a voice in the pit was heard 
in a smothered shriek, saying, as the flames mounted to his 
eyes, "Let me out — it is the devil ;" so I have seen Choate 
raving away before a jury, and before four thousand peo- 
ple, spell-bound himself, and enchanting them into a will- 
ing submission to his sway. 



188 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

His hand played a great part in his dramatic effects ; 
it trembled and vibrated as he extended his arm, more vio- 
lently and nervously than the hand of any other orator 
who ever spoke in America. Mr. Everett occasionally ex- 
hibits this tremble, and did it with great effect in the cli- 
max sentence of his eulogy on Mr. Choate, when he spoke 
of his " imperial clarion ;" but even then the audience of 
Faneuil Hall saw nothing like the furious nervousness of 
movement, which they have often seen in the waving of 
Choate's almost unhinged hand and fingers. 

Mr. Choate's voice was not so good for halls as it was for 
Courts ; generally in them, he was not loud ; but in great 
moments he was extremely loud ; his voice, then, like Chat- 
ham's, rang out, and through the green doors, and into the 
lobbies, and down the stairs ; and many a time I have 
known he was speaking in the Court Room long before I 
had climbed to the top of the stone stairs which led to it. 

Into every portion of a case, whether trivial or serious, 
he infused the same wild, Saracenic ardor ; but especially 
and a thousand times multiplied, into the final argument. 
He was full of what the men of Magenta called " elan" — 
dash and rapture. No matter how dry and meager the 
facts, how hoi)eless of adornment the issue, it was all poet- 
ized to him by its relation to his battle. It might be an 
outpost, it might be a slight engagement on the distant 
wings, but it was all his battle. 

When the great Napoleon, in his letters to his brother, 
King Joseph, says, amid his thoughts of empire, " Be care- 
ful of those shoes I sent you for the army of Spain ; they 
cost me so much apiece. They are well soled, and the 
upper leather strong," this dry detail is as interesting to 
the imperial writer as the direction to advance a column, 
for both alike are his movements of battle, both are of his 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 189 

apparatus of victory. So to this wild and wonderful man, 
the Napoleon of the Courts, the simplest transaction, the 
most lowly words, assumed the place in his battle speeches 
of epic incidents and Ip'ical expressions.- 

Mr. Choate had in his own nature the enthusiasm of 
poetry and of passion both. Poetical and cultivated people 
are nothing before a practical Jury ; but even ignorant 
people, inspired with passion, are always efficient with 
them. But when both are combined, poetry and passion 
together, they domineer. Men must yield in virtue of their 
inborn sympathies and sensibilities ; more particulaely if 
both })assion and poetry are regulated by common sense. 

In life Mr. Choate did not always exhibit good, plain 
common sense ; but in dealing with his jury he always did. 
At the funeral meeting of the Suffolk Bar for him. Gov- 
ernor Banks, a member of that Bar, expressed the opinion 
that at the basis of all Mr. Clioate's dazzling intellectual 
displays was a foundation of solid Saxon common sense. 
And it was so, or he never could have manipulated Yankee 
juries as he did. The marvel and the miracle was to see 
tliis common sense blend with and support such magical 
improvisations, such transporting raptures. Talma, the 
great French actor, said that in his plays he saw not the 
people, saw not the coroneted boxes of the imperial family ; 
for as he walked upon the scene of his tragedy, the colors 
of things grew red and bloody ; and around the tiers of 
aalleries he seemed to see skulls and death heads crowded 
and grinning. Even thus changed and transfigured was 
all the scene of his action to this great actor of whom I am 
speaking. Not that he saw such tragic images as these ; 
but he doubtless saw for a moment, in the glory of his 
passion, glimpses of hands, and caught snatches of sounds, 
the offspring of his own unearthly imagination ; yet at a 



190 KEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS GHOATE. 

moment, at an interruption by the Court, at an expression 
of distrust shooting across a face, he would come back to 
real life, and come down to plain fact and take a new start 
again on common sense ground ; dispose of the difficulty ; 
and sweep even more victoriously on from this fresh foun- 
dation, into his glittering realm of thought. Common 
sense was the basis of his thoughts and of his talk. He 
was full of sentiment and of womanliness, but he was far 
from being a sentimentalist. 

To listen to one of his Jury appeals was a very great 
pleasure to any man, but to an intellectual man, it was a 
treat of the rarest delight ; to trace the literary allusions, 
to remark the significant sentences which he threw off, 
modeled on famous sentences in Antiquity ; to feel the 
charm of the luxuriant language, to catch the impulse of 
his whirlpool of thought, and to know all the time that all 
this was shaped by a guage and rule of exactest applica- 
tion ; and then to bend before the witchcraft of his man- 
ner, your mind fascinated by the jugglery of his art, and 
your senses yielding to all the varied sorceries of his speech. 
This to a mere looker on was an epicurean banquet. To 
a lettered mind, a speech of Choate's suggested a thousand 
associations and references of beauty and of power ; the 
scenes of history over which our hearts gave their young 
tears ; the memorable thoughts of ambition ; the grand 
sentiments speaking of all that is noble and admirable in 
man, which have survived time ; — all these and such as 
these, were often on his tongue ; the treasures of litera- 
ture, the grace of thought, the kindling allusion, the start- 
ling illustration, all combined to create the charm of his 
enchanting rhetoric. 

It is true he did not argue many great cases, but he 
made many little cases great ; and many little men tem- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 191 

porarily gi'eat. You would be in a small dull Court Room, 
in a dry and petty case ; he spoke — and the scene lifted and 
opened, as if the walls were hanging curtains rolling up at 
the bidding of a magic tongue to let you. see the sccDery 
of enchantment all around. To how many country Juries 
innocent of all liberal thoughts, has he given the vision of 
strange stars ; he has, indeed, by the whirl as well as the 
elevation of his thoughts, made many a country Justice see 
stars; and driven him to think amid the intellectual cor- 
ruscations that the end of the world had now almost come. 

To a professional mind, the spectacle of his forensic 
speeches was of heightened beauty, from the manifest grasp 
of the whole case which every division of the speech 
showed. A professional observer would appreciate the 
bearing and relation of every part of the fabric ; and thus 
would feel a pleasure beyond even the gratification derived 
from the rhetoric and the enthusiasm. 

Still, to be fully appreciated by anybody, I think Mr. 
Choate should have been heard more than once ; his style 
was so extremely peculiar, that, like Pinkney, you were at 
first a little repulsed, and did not feel all his charm ; his 
ungainly action and unearthly screams, his jumping up 
and down, his labyrinthine sentences, perjilexed and often 
baffled your criticism, till he had been heard often. 

Of course he was imitated. Superficial observers were 
caught by his velocity, his vociferation, his verbiage, his 
sing-song tone, his queer manners, his twistings of face, 
his rolling gait and various awkwardnesses, not less than 
by the beautiful luxuriance of his curly locks, and his fin- 
gers ever tossing them into admired disorder. Many of 
these traits would have been fatal to anybody else ; but 
he put upon them the indescribable stamp of his own great 
originality, and converted them into elements of fascina- 



192 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

tion. Caught, liowever, by the fantastic outside expres- 
sions of the rare genius within, young men copied his ways ; 
hut only to excite mirth in proportion to the perfection of 
the counterfeit. Wherever Choate had been in his Court 
circuit, you coukl often follow his track by the confused 
and tangled heads of his copyists, their solemnly owl-like 
looks, careening shoulders and canting intonations. An 
old Judge said once, contemplating these phenomena, that 
Choate had quite ruined the manners of the young Bar. 
One young man, I remember particularly, threw himself 
his hair and his voice about with such a mimicry of the 
Choatcan caprices, as to provoke the just criticism, that he 
exhibited " the contortions of the Sybil without any of 
the inspiration." 

It never seemed to me that Mr. Choate set umch value 
on Eloquence as an instrument of parade or display. The 
epidictic branches of oratory he did not cultivate ; he 
valued eloquence as a means to an end, not an end in 
itself The rapt pleasure of utterance was not necessary to 
him ; he could have gained as much pleasure in himself 
and his mind, in other ways ; but he looked to oratory as 
an instrument of power ; an instrument for wielding and 
applying his vast intellectual resources. It w^as its impe- 
rial quality, not its esthetic quality that he admired ; hence 
it happened that he cared little for Platform repute ; but if 
he lost a great case, it made him almost sick. Not to de- 
light, but to delight in order to conquer, was his desire. 

What to him w^as it that fine gentlemen said he was un- 
couth ! or that as he rushed about in his speaking with his 
thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, snarling critics said 
he seemed like a wild animal in convulsions ! He cared 
not ; he held in his right hand fortune or poverty for clients 
who worshiped him as a god ; and he could give honor and 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 193 

life, or dishonor and death to the objects of his favor or his 
frown. Wliat, therefore, cared he — the Monarch of men's 
destinies in the Courts — for the caj)tious or tlie apphiuding 
criticism of parade orators, who knew nothing of war ? 
Theirs was the Dorian mood of soft recorders ; his the 
proud, broken strains of the charge and the march. His 
sentences were trained to keep step to the music, not of the 
field but of the fight. And what, even also, if he had lost 
posthumous fame ? He w^alked through life encompassed by 
admiring, supplicating, — nay, even cringing tributaries. No 
power on earth is more desj)otic than that which the great 
first-class lawyer has for the time being, over all within 
his sphere ; his word is laAv, his acts the salvation of his 
clients, his fiat — destiny. Hardly does the Third Napoleon 
sit in his imperial robes more truly throned, than did Rufus 
Choate in his old gray coat, sit in the center of his Court 
Room empire, extending to all who had the happiness to 
depend on him, grace and gladness with a princely be- 
nignity 

His cases were his life and his horizon. Every day he 
was absorbed in somebody's business beside his own. He 
thought with that client, felt for him, and identified him- 
self utterly with his fortune, regardless of every thing else 
beside ; that client and that case, to his eyes, temporarily 
eclipsed the whole world. In these law scenes, therefore, 
he seemed to have an artificin,l, but yet, for the time, a real 
existence. Daily a new case, new client, and new witnesses 
surrounded him ; and daily, like a voyager, he sailed away 
into the new clime of a new case, with new people and 
new talk. His powers of concentration and imagination 
were so great that this was almost literally true of him; 
he stayed at home, but traveled through all the ranks and 
Bcenery of humanity. In allusion to this entire surrender 

9 



194 REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 

of himself to his legal scene, some one wittily said, " Clioate 
is rarely Choate, and he don't know himself, when he gets 
up in the morning, ivlio he is to he ; but he takes up his 
papers, looks in the glass, and says to himself, ' Am I Mr. 
A or Mr. B to-day V and not until he has scrutinized his 
brief does he know how to baptize himself for that day ; 
then he is that person whom he undertakes to be." 

It used to be a subject of profound wonder to me, to see 
him toiling and trying so mightily from day to day for 
comparatively little remuneration, and on little themes. 
Had he picked his cases, he would have made more glory 
and more money, with less labor ; but I soon found that 
action, tireless and ceaseless, was the law of his being ; 
that this incessant, and unflagging, and diversified toil, was 
the necessity of his nature. Now, he no longer labored for 
renown ; he had gained all his renown at fifty. Nor could 
he be thought to labor necessarily for money, for it is be- 
lieved he left a respectable property ; but he labored for 
labor, and, in his later years, for that chiefly. When he 
had finished a great case, and everybody was tired out, and 
the jury tliat tried it was obliged to be dismissed, Choate 
would turn right round to the other jury and open a new 
case to them of equal magnitude and demanding an equal 
strain upon his powers, w^ith all the freshness of a new 
comer. 

I do not think he died of labor. He neither wore out, or 
rusted out : he died of an acute disease. 

His esprit de corps, in regard to his professional prac- 
tice, was chivalric : utterly bound up as he was, in victory 
in his own causes, still he would sacrifice a client and his 
own argument rather than leave an associate lawyer in a bad 
position before the jury and the world. I remember one 
case especially, a criminal case, when his junior got into a 



REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 195 

disagreeable fuss with the Court, and with a witness also. 
Choate told me he disapproved of his junior's course of 
action ; " but," said he, " I would not for the world have 
left him in the lurch, and I spoke as if I concurred with 
him, although I weakened myself before the jury by do- 
ing so." On another occasion, when a young lawyer was 
attacked rather severely by an official high in the admin- 
istration of the criminal law of the Commonwealth, his 
senior associate was not thought by the Bar to have stood 
by him so promptly and gallantly as he might. A long 
time after the occurrence Mr. Choate showed reluctance to 
promote the good fortunes of that gentleman, the senior 
alluded to ; and being pressed for a reason, said to me, 
" The only thing in the world I have against him is that 

he didn't stand by his own junior against Mr. ." He 

had nothing to do with the case himself, but thus long 
and seriously had he treasured up the memory of regret, 
for this neglect on the part of one of the members of his 
cherished profession. 

But few, comparatively, of his legal arguments have 
been preserved. He was extremely reluctant to aid in 
their preservation. In the great Quaker case, in the fall 
of 1852, which filled Boston with broad brims and brown 
coats, one of the Quaker gentlemen was resolved to get 
Choate's speech and keep it. He employed a phonograph- 
ist, and when the report was ready, he took it to Mr. 
Choate, and telling him how important the Quaker frater- 
nity considered it, asked him to correct it as he would 
wish it to stand. Choate took it. When the gentleman 
called for it he had, of course accidentally, mislaid it. The 
applicant knew his man, and drawing forth another copy, 
" Well, then, Mr. Choate," said he, " I have two more, 
and if you don't coiTect it it shall be published just as it 



19G REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

is." Mr. Choate looked up laughingly. " You have in- 
deed ! Why, then, let nic have it and I will correct it." 
He took it, and when the Quaker called again, he had not 
lost it. Thus it was that that report happens to be now 
in existence. 

Yet it is quite impossible to convey in type the notion 
of how he said, what he said. The story is well known of 
Lord Chatham in Parliament, beginning a speech with 
" Sugar, Mr. Speaker ;" the House laughed — the great man 
looked around and repeated the word " Sugar" with such 
effect that when at the third time he threw his bold glance 
upon them and exclaimed, "Who will laugh at Sugar 
now ?" not a man moved a muscle — they sat transfixed and 
awed. I saw Mr. Choate do something like this once in 
court. He had been uttering a most extravagant simile, 
with passionate intensity, when the other party slightly 
smiled. Choate drew himself up to his full height, threw 
back his head, and, still standing square to the jury, re- 
volved his blazing eyes back a little over the scene. " Ah," 
said he with distended nostrils and fierce energy, "no one 
laughs ! no one laughs ! Such is my cause ; it carries all ! 
No one laughs ;" and his resolute eyes swejit the scene 
with commanding glance. Strange as it may seem, no one 
did laugh. He himself was pale as death. 

But such effects as these can only be alluded to, not 
described. You can tell when and how the lightning 
struck. No one can paint the burning bolt in its descent. 

His greatest figures and images he often used more than 
once, at long intervals ; and, like the oft-repeated good 
things in the rhetoric of Demosthenes and Cicero, they 
improved on each repetition. 

But there was one phrase which always and everlast- 
ingly appeared, no matter who he was addressing : that 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 197 

was the phrase, " I shall have the honor to submit to you," 
or, " I was having the honor," or, " I was about to have 
the honor," etc. This honorable phrase was repeated and 
re-repeated everlastingly. Doubtless it often had no in- 
considerable effect on weak and silly men, easily flattered. 

No professional description of this gentleman ought to 
close without alluding again and again to his benignant 
temper. In fifteen years I never saw him really enraged ; 
never heard him utter a petulant, ill-natured word, nor 
make a malicious remark. He had charity for all men. 
And the daily spectacle of his saintly serenity, sweetened 
all the Courts through which he revolved. 

Driven to death by business, literally hunted from 
Court to Court, and street to street, and into his lil)rary, 
and almost into his bed, by besieging parties with their 
suits and their thoughts ; sick himself half the time, from 
over-pressure of work ; still lie went patiently and quietly 
on, always at top speed — never "in a hurry ;" like the 
stars, which haste not and rest not, but shine on for ever. 
If you went into his ofiice to consult him, no matter how 
deeply busy he was, he received you always kindly and de- 
liberately ; never snarled or snapped at any interruption ; 
and though perfectly simple and guileless in his manners, 
impressed his visitor, in five minutes, with the conviction 
that this was a great man before him. 

I think his loss will be felt by the Bar who were his 
companions, and the youth who were his worshipers, more 
and more, for many years. He and Webster were the two 
most signally marked men in genius and in physiognomy 
that New England has ever given to the Union. I have 
studied their heads and faces when they were alive, and 
were sitting together, in Court and in private : since both 
are dead, I have studied their busts and pictures in close 



198 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

proximity ; and certainly there was far more similarity iu 
them than would readily be supposed. Their counte- 
nances were of similar complexion ; the large, strong nose 
very much alike ; the eyes essentially similar — Choate's 
larger, hut with very much the same look as Webster's 
when he opened them wide ; the head not very dissimilar, 
save in the fact that Webster's was wide across the front, 
Choate's deep from front to back of the ear ; in each, 
therefore, the same spaciousness of the brain chamber, 
though gained in a different way ; and both of them, in 
the midst of all their splendor, were dark, somber, solemn 
men. 

Choate's mouth, however, and chin were entirely dif- 
ferent from Webster's, and he had the air of a more pensive 
person. But a sight of him, in action, was Avorth a very 
long journey. I think, if Thorwaldsen could have seen 
the head and the picture of Choate as he saw that of 
Webster, in the beauty and the literalness of sculpture, 
he would have been tilled with a similar astonishment. 

His genius, so rare, so great, so precious, ought not to be 
forgotten. Erskine still speaks in England to his brethren 
of the Bar, in his full-length statue ; and if Kufus Choate 
could be embodied by the cunning of sculpture, and stand 
up in tlie marble or the bronze, as we were all wont to 
gaze upon him, and so live for ever among us, it would 
honor not New England only, but America. Thirty 
States would admire his genius ; and all the generation that 
knew him would teach their children to love the name of 
this meteor man, — so mighty, yet so mild. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 199 



ANECDOTES AND SAYINGS. 

A multitude of anecdotes are current about his practice 
in Court and out of Court, and very many of his sayings, 
witicisms, and observations. These, however, must derive 
much of their force from the way he said them, and from 
the memory of him in the mind of any one who now reads 
them. He used to utter his queer sayings with such pon- 
derous deliberation, such imperturbable solemnity, that type 
and paper can do no more than hint at them. 

At a time when the Peace societies were condemning 
the Military volunteer organizations somewhat harshly, 
some one in his office had a religious newspaper with a 
column of objurgations, commencing, " Christian soldier ! 
why do you bear that instrument of death against your 
shoulder ?" The paper was passing round the office, and 
one of the students undertook to read it aloud, beginning 
in a loud voice, " Christian soldier ! wliy do you bear 
that instrument of death upon your shoulder ?" Choate 
looked up from his writing in the further room; " Why," 
said he, with a sly twinkle in his eye, " that's very easily 
answered. Why does he bear that gun upon his shoulder ? 
It's because the statute prescribes it." The fun here lies in 
the application of the literal reason in answer to the high 
moral appeal ; but it may not be obvious to an unprofes- 
sional mind. It was, however, sufficient at the time to set 
the office and the entry in a conflagration of mirth, 

I heard him, in an argument before a Legislative com- 
mittee, describe the boundary line between Rhode Island 
and Massachusetts in this language : " Why," said he, 
"it is like starting at a bush, from thence to a blue 
jay, from thence to a hive of bees in swarming time, 



200 REMINISCENCES OF R IT F U B CHOATE. 

from tlience to three liuiidred foxes witli firebrands in 
their tails." 

Two or three jears ago, during a season of illness, Mr. 
Choate was visited by one of his friends, who urged upon him 
the importance of pajang more attention to his health. " Sir," 
said the visitor, " you must go away ; if you continue your 
professional labors thus, you will certainly undermine your 
constitution." Mr. Choate looked up, and with that grave 
irony and peculiar twinkle of the eye which were so marked 
and indescribable when he jested, said, " Sir, the constitu- 
tion was destroyed long ago ; I am now living under the 
bye-laws." 

Coming into a lawyer's office one day, he saw a close 
winding staircase leading up to the consulting room. His 
eye scanned its cork-screw curvings for a moment; then 
turning to the lawyer, his look prophesied a witticism, as 
he quietly observed, " How drunk a man must be, to go up 
those stairs !" 

In a divorce case, he was arguing against the proba- 
bility of guilt. " They were playful, Gentlemen of the Jury, 
not guilty. After the morning toil, they sat down upon the 
hay mow for refreshment, not crime. There may have been 
a little youthful foudhng — playful, not amorous. They 
only wished to soften the asperities of hay making." 

Many passages of interest between him and the Chief 
Justice are floating round Court street in lawyer's talk; 
some of them true, some of them problematical. 

In a case, I believe in Essex county, where an old man, 
white-haired and feeble, was a party, Choate gave reins to 
his imagination. He poetized upon the aged and vener- 
able object of their sympathies, and at last quoted in full a 
touching passage from King Lear. The Chief raised his 
mighty and — with reverence be it spoken — shaggy head, 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 201 

and glowered upon the poet. " Mr. Choate," he broke out, 
" this is a dry question of law, and you mistake if you 
suppose the Supreme Court is to be influenced by any such 
considerations as you appear to be suggesting." Choate 
paused a little, — fussed with his papers, — then murmured 
out audibly enough for the tittering Bar to hear him, " The 
Chief Justice isn't much of a lawyer, but what a polite 
and amiable man he is V Considering that the gruff 
Chief is, as a lawyer, worthy to rank with Theophilus 
Parsons, the rejoinder was very sarcastic. 

On another occasion when the Chief gi'owled at him 
ratlier savagely, he turned his head back to the Bar gath- 
ered behind him — for he would not say a sharp thing directly 
to a Judge, — and muttered slowly and soliloquizingly, 
" We venerate the Chief Justice, not for any beauty of 
form or feature; — but for the supposed hidden intelligence 
within." To appreciate this, one should have known 
Choate; and imagine him muttering this audibly to him- 
self, as if he was trying to account to himself, for the re- 
spect he felt for the grim Chief notwithstanding his sav- 
ageness. For I know he did truly honor, appreciate, and 
admire Chief Justice Shaw. 

For a long time the story ran current that at a law 
club Choate gave as a sentiment, " The Chief Justice ! 
We contemplate him as the East Indian does his wooden- 
headed idol — he knows that he is ugly, but he feels that 
he is great." 

In the famous Methodist Church case, argued at New 
York within a few years, he made a memorable and daz- 
zling argument. On leaving town next day, his clients' 
agent gave him $2000, and told him never to abandon the 
case while a Court remained to which it could be carried. 
" Well," said he to a friend who stood by, " I declare these 



202 REMINISCENCES OF KDFUS CHOATE. 



religious people fight harder and pay better than any 
clients I ever knew." 

In a trial for divorce, in Dedham, a leading character 
in the case, I believe one of the parties to it, was a queer 
sort of half-cracked, hair-brained individual; and during 
the trial Choate stopped in his musing walk up and down 
the Court room more than once to observe him, saying to 
his associate, " I don't quite make out whether this man 
is fool or knave ; he seems a sort of miscellaneous person." 
When he came to comment on him in the argument, he 
said, " This man seems to me, your Honor, to have a sort 
oi— incipient, — intermiUe7it,—fy-madness." The way he 
brought out these successive qualifying adjectives produced 
great hilarity in all who had watched the progress of the 
case. 

Every one at the Suffolk bar knows his famous descrip- 
tion of the " second-hand harness" which was the subject of 
suit. Holding up in his hand a part of the harness, Mr. 
Choate said, " To be sure, gentlemen, this harness hasn't 
upon it all that gloss and glitter which takes the eye of the 
vulgar crowd ; but I put it to you, as intelligent jurors, 
acquainted with the ordinary affairs of life, whether it 
isn't a safe, sound, substantial, suitable, second-rate, second- 
hand harness." A critic of his has quoted this anecdote, 
but expresses the opinion that it is a fib. It is not so con- 
sidered, however, I think, by the lawyers generally ; for it 
is exactly in the style of his exaggerations when he was 
excited, even on the most trivial subject ; and anybody 
who knew him well, can picture to himself exactly the 
manner in which he would shoot out every one of these 
secondary adjectives. The same critic, just alluded to, 
adds another little anecdote of a different kind : "A friend 
of mine, speaking to him of Macready's art in acting, said 



REMINISCENCE SOF RUFUS CHOATE. 203 

that a person once heard a man crying " murder," for two 
hours in succession, in the room under liis own at a hotel. 
On inquiry he found it was Mr. Macready practicing on the 
word, to get the right agonized tone. ' If a man,' said 
Choate, ' should cry murder, for two hours, under my win- 
dow — I WDuld commit it !' " The re^dewer goes on to 
observe very justly that " sentences cut apart from the 
main body of one of his productions can only suggest his 
manner through the process of caricature. Thus," he says, 
" we recollect that an honest master mason, in one of his 
arguments, rose to the dignity of a ' builder and beautifier 
of cities.' In another he represented the skij)per of a mer- 
chant vessel, wlio had been prosecuted by his crew for not 
giving them enough to eat, as being busily studying some 
law book, while passing the island of St. Helena, to find 
out his duty in case the vessel was short of provisions. 
' Such,' said Mr. Choate, ' were his meditations as the 
invisible currents of the ocean bore him by the grave of 
Napoleon.' A witness once testified, iu reference to one 
of his clients, that he had called upon him on Friday 
evening, found him crying, and on asking him what was 
the matter, received in answer, ' I'm afraid I've run 
against a snag.' This was rendered by Mr. Choate some- 
Avliat in this wav : ' Such were his feeling's and such his 
actions down to that fatal Friday night, when, at ten 
o'clock, in that flood of tears, his hope went out like a 
candle.' These instances convey an idea of the process by 
which Mr. Choate makes ' strange combinations out of 
common things,' but a little more accurate than an inten- 
tional parody of his manner." 

An anecdote of a constable's return, and his comment 
upon it, has been told before, but not in full. It was an 
action of replevin, and the constable was ordered to attach 



204 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

certain goods according to the schedule furnished him. He 
returned the writ into court, with the schedule attached 
and the goods. The return was after this fashion : " On 
this day, having attached this, having taken that, having 
done the other thing," etc. Choate objected to this return 
of service; on the ground, first, generally, that it was bad. 
The Judge remarked that, though inelegant and ungram- 
matical in its structure, the paper still seemed to be good 
in a legal sense. " It may be so, your Honor," replied Mr. 
Choate, " but it must be confessed that he has greatly 
overioorlced the participle." 

When the laugh which greeted this sally had subsided 
a little, he took the second objection; w^hich was, that the 
officer had not returned the same goods as those in his sched- 
ule. His schedule, for example, said ginghams; he returned 
cassimeres, etc. The old Chief took up his copy, and read 
along, comparing in his copy the schedule and the return. 
At last he came to one item which was right in his copy; and 
the copy before him was the original — Choate had in his 
hands a transcript of the original^" Very well, Mr. Choate," 
said he, "if he has taken one article according to the 
schedule it will support the writ." " Yes, your Honor, but 
he has not one." " Certainly he has ; here is one. He is 
ordered to attach shirtino-s, and he returns that he has 
attached shirtings." " No !" replied Choate, respectfully, 
but firmly ; "he is ordered to attach shirtings, and he 
returns sheetings; a ■yer?/, very different thing." " No, Mr. 
Choate ; look at your paper and I will look at mine." So 
the old Chief buried his great head in the papers a mo- 
ment, and Choate spelled out his again. A pause ensued. 
" Well, Mr. Choate, you see you are wrong," was the next 
remark of the Bench, somewhat testily. " No, sir," per- 
sisted Choate, " T see I am right." The Chief, by this time 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 205 

quite indignant, took the paper in liis hand, and, looking 
on it and standing up, roared out each letter in portentous 
tones, " S-h-i-r-t spells shirt, does it not, Mr. Choate ?" 
Choate saw at once that the mistake must have arisen 
from an error in copying his transcript from the judge's 
original. " Well, your Honor," said he, with a look of 
great gravity, " I should have supposed it did spell shirt, 
without an express decision of the Supreme Court of Mas- 
sachusetts upon it." 

The Whig Review of January, 1847, in an article upon 
hiui, adds another example from his speeches, which hap- 
pily illustrates his humor and fun. After speaking of a 
grotesque image which Mr. Choate used in his speech on 
the Oregon Question, — of the Legislature putting its head 
out of the window, and in a voice audible all over the 
world, speaking to the negotiators of the pending treaty, 
bidding them God speed, but insinuating that if they did 
not give up the whole subject in dispute, it would be set- 
tled by main strength, — it refers to his picture of a New 
England summer, introduced in his second speech on the 
Tariff, to illustrate the idea that irregularity is not ruin, 

" Take the New England climate, in summer ; you 
would think the world was coming to an end. Certain 
recent heresies on that subject may have had a natural 
origin there. Cold to-day, hot to-morrow ; mercury at 
eighty degrees in the morning, with wind at south-west ; 
and in three hours more a sea-turn, wind at east, a thick 
fog from the very bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty 
degrees of Fahrenheit ; now so dry as to kill all the beans in 
New Hampshire ; then floods carrying off the bridges of the 
Penobscot and Connecticut ; snow in Portsmouth in July ; 
and the next day a man and a yoke of oxen killed by light- 
ning in Rhode Island. You would think the w^orld was 



206 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

twenty times coming to an end ! But I don't know how 
it is : we go along ; the early and the latter rain falls, each 
in its season ; seed-time and harvest do not fail ; the sixty 
days of hot, corn weather are pretty sure to be measured 
out to us. The Indian Summer, with its bland south- 
west and mitigated sunshine, brings all up ; and on the 
twenty-fifth of November, or thereabouts, being Thursday, 
three millions of grateful people, in meeting-houses, or 
around the family board, give thanks for a year of health, 
jilenty, and happiness." 

A few years ago, a Yankee "down easter" tried his 
hand at describing Mr. Choate in his own down-east style. 
It is of course a caricature, but making due allowance for 
that, it gives a notion of this marvelous man, as seen by 
one with an eye for the ludicrous. 

Here is our greatest legal orator, as seen with a down- 
east eye : " Kufus Choate is a picture to look at, and a 
crowder to spout. He is about seven feet six, or six feet 
seven, in his socks, supple as an eel, and wiry as a cork- 
screw. His face is a compound of wrinkles, ' yaller jan- 
ders,' and jurisprudence. He has small, keen, piercing 
black eyes, and a head shaped like a mammoth goose-egg, 
big end up ; his hair black and curly, much resembling a 
bag of wool in ' admirable disorder,' or a brush heap in a 
gale of wind. His body has no particular shape, and his 
wit and legal 'dodges' have set many a judge in a snicker, 
and so confounded jurors as to make it almost impossible 
for them to speak plain English. 

"Eufus is great on twisting and coiling himself up, 
squirming around, and prancing, jumping and kicking up 
the dust, when steam's up. His oratory is first-rate, and 
his arguments ingenious and forcible. He generally makes 
a ten-strike— judge and jury down at the end of every sen- 



IIEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 207 

tence. He is great on flowery expressions and liigh-falootin 
' flub-diibs.' Strangers mostly think he" is crazy, and the 
rest scarcely understand what it is about. He has been in 
the Senate, and may be, if he has time to fish for it, Presi- 
dent of the United States. He invoices his time and elo- 
cution fou]' thousand per cent, over ordinary charges for 
having one's self put through a course of law. Rufus 
Choate is about fifty years of age, j)erhaps over. He is 
considered the ablest lawyer in New England, or perhaps 
in the United States." 

Caricatured as this is, the down easter evidently appre- 
ciates the greatness and originality of his power. 

In a suit for wages by a young woman who worked in 
a milliner's shop, he concluded a powerful appeal by say- 
ing, " Was it not enough. Gentlemen, that she should live 
in that atmosphere of silks, satins, ribbons and lavender 
water, — without being cheated out of her wages ?" 

Speaking of the democratic administration in the days 
when the Whig party still lived, he said, " Well, it is as I 
expected. Put you know ivho on horseback, and he'll ride 
you Jcnoiv ivJiere." 

When, in 1847, he argued for a proper license system 
of the sale of spirituous liquors, before a committee of the 
Boston Common Council, he was in the j)rime of his 
power. A satirical paper at that time gave the following- 
description of him, which, in all its burlesque, is never- 
theless highly panegyrical : " As he shot his piercing, reso- 
lute eyes hither and thither, drew on that solemn face, and 
poured out those deep tones of awful solemnity, rolled up 
those tremendous climaxes, raised his commanding form 
upon his toes, came down upon his heels like two pavers' 
rammers, and shook the whole firmament of the Council 
chamber Hke an earthquake, we could not but imagine what 



208 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

a sensation he would have produced as a revival preacher, 
or as Kichard the Third on the stage." 

This newspaper reference to Kichard the Third is very 

apposite. 

It always seemed to me he might have been trained to 
triumph in tragedy. Dark faces are deficient in delicate 
expression, hut for intensity of look, and great and distant 
effects, are far better than lighter or blonde faces. I have 
heard a poetic observer and critic of men say, that two men 
only of this generation had ever been able to put fire into his 
brain ; one was Edwin Booth, the other Rufus Choate. 

But it was in the mixture of the grave with the gay 
thoughts that his humor often glanced the brightest. 
About the time that Minot's Ledge Light-house, in Bos- 
ton harbor, Avas carried away in a terrific winter storm 
which lasted a day or two, he happened into the Athenaeum 
Library; and gazing from its ample windows on the broad 
open space before him, flanked by Park street church; 

" Well, Mr. F ," said he to the librarian, with a smile, 

"after all this blast, there stands my old friend, Park 
street steeple, unshaken, intact, unterrified." Then his 
glance fell on the wide intervening graveyard, his smiling 
eyes dropped, his voice sank into a rich, mellow, mournful 
tone, and with much emotion, he continued, "Ah, Mr. 

r , the dead are safest, midst all this hurly-burly !" 

The thoughts and the manner in the two clauses of this 
sentence would have brought inevitably to any one pres- 
ent, first a smile, then a tear. 

In a speech at Salem, in 1848, after many of his old 
Whig party had gone over to the Free Soil party, he gazed 
around the great crescent of people before him, and con- 
cluded one of his opening paragraphs emotionally thus : 
" Of the great men I knew here, and loved, some of them 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 209 

are dead ;" then pausing an instant, long enough for all to 
remember that some of them were alive, hut lost to the 
party, he continued, " Aye, some of them are dead — and 
some of them are loorse than dead !" 

A divorce case, argued about 1841, where the parties 
lived in South Boston, is still remembered by the Bar as 
giving occasion to some extraordinary feats of legal leger- 
demain by Mr. Choate. Bradford Sumner was on the 
other side, and his feelings were ardently enlisted in the 
cause. I remember he caused great mirth among Bosto- 
nians by calling South Boston " that Eob Roy neighbor- 
hood." One of the chief witnesses to prove tlie alleged 
guilt by reason of which the divorce was sought for, on the 
part of the husband, was a woman named Abigail Bell. 
Mr. Choate was for the husband and the divorce. On 
cross-examination, Mr. Sumner asked this witness, " Are 
you married ?" " No." " Have you children ?" " No." 
" Have you a child ?'' Then there was a long and dis- 
tressing pause. The question was repeated — " Have you a 
child ?" At last the monosyllable " yes" was fully uttered 
by the witness. Instantly the counsel ceased the cross- 
examination. Of course her testimony, where there was a 
conflict of testimony, was immensely damaged in the eyes 
of the jury, by this fact confessed of the maiden mother. 
Choate did not ask any question in reply or explanation, 
and she stepped down from the witness-stand a blackened 
woman. 

When, however, he came finally, in the course of his 
argument, to reply to that part of his case which rested on 
her evidence, he took her character in hand. The Court 
room hushed the moment he said, "Abigail Bell's evidence. 
Gentlemen, is before you." Raising himself up and with 
great firmness, he went on — ^^ I solemnly assert there is not 



210 REMINISCENCES OF RUEUS CHOATE. 

the shadoio of a shade of doubt or of suspicion on that evi- 
dence or on her character I" Everybody looked stupefied 
with astonishment at these words. Solemnly he pro- 
ceeded, " What though in an unguarded moment, she may 
have trusted too far to the young man to whom she had 
pledged her untried affections; to whom she was to be 
wedded on the next Lord's day ; and — who was sud- 
denly struck dead at her feet by a stroke of lightning out 
of the heavens \" Then he made another of his tremen- 
dous pausings, and snufiings of the air, and his strange 
dark eyes lowered over the jury, while they took in this 
novel and extraordinary explanation. The whole Court 
room felt its force, and lighted up as if a feeling of relief 
had been experienced by every one present. There was a 
buzz, a stir, a universal sensation — and then again, Choate 
rolled along under full headway. 

As a lawyer, he had a right to supjDose any explanation 
of the damaging fact which would account for it consist- 
ently with innocence ; — and this was his hypothesis. 

Mr. Sumner's argument to the jury was very able ; I 
well remember, although it is sixteen or seventeen years 
ago, how he told me he had laid awake all night thinking 
it over. But Mr. Choate won the case. 

In a well-known case against the Old Colony Eailroad, 
when plaintiff sued for damages for injury by being run 
down by their train, Choate called some boys as witnesses. 
They swore they were shooting coots near by the crossing 
when the accident occurred; and that the train did not 
make the proper signal for a crossing. The defense called 
the Selectmen of Marshfield to prove that coots did not fly 
in August; and therefore the boys could not have been 
there shooting them, as they swore, in that month. 

Choate, as he approached their testimony in his argu- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 211 

ment, said, " I do not suppose this boy was ornitbological 
extensively. They call the Selectmen to prove there Avas 
no game for him there. The Selectmen ! .Why hav'nt 
they called the sportsmen of Marshfield ? Why hav'nt 
they called those men who have learned this thing as they 
have learned other things, from great example I — ' to 
throw the line, to point the tube, to recognize the 
game ?' " Of course the allusion here, was to Daniel 
Webster's neighboring residence of Marshfield ; and the 
conversational instructions he had been so fond of giving 
to his farmer friends. In point of fact, too, I believe the 
Selectmen were wrong,, and the sportsmen would have cor- 
rected them ; for although not frequent, still — coots do 
fly in August. 

Mr. Choate made a great passage in the case of Shaw 
vs. Worcester Railroad, which was one of the last trials of 
much popular interest that he was engaged in. The per- 
son injured by the collision of the cars with his wagon, 
which was the subject of the suit, was said, by a witness, 
to have been intoxicated at the time he was driving. On 
cross-examination the witness said he knew it, because he 
leant over him and perceived his breath, which seemed as 
if '• he had been drinking gin and brandy." Commenting 
on this with great power, Choate said, " This witness 
swears he stood bv the dving man in his last moments. 
What was he there for ?'" he shouted out; " Was it to ad- 
minister those assiduities which are ordinarily proffered at 
the bedside of dying men ? AVas it to extend to him the 
consolations of that religion which for eighteen hundred 
years has comforted the world ? No, gentlemen, no ! He 
leans over the departing sufferer ; he bends his face nearer 
and nearer to him — and what does he do ! (in a voice of 
thunder) What does he do ? — Smells gin and hrandyT 



212 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

I think this, as he worked it out, was the most effective 
anti-climax ever achieved in our Courts. 

In the Dalton divorce case he characterized the letters 
of the lady to her husband as being like " the Eclogues 
of Virgil — one long sigh for peace ; they are one long song 
of ' Home, sweet Home;' and him, her husband, its destined 
idol." 

In an insurance case, tried in the Supreme Court, Mr. 
Choate's vessel was alleged to be unseaworthy, and the 
evidence disclosed a plank started from her sides. It be- 
came pertinent for the orator to sear this jolace up, and he 
closed one of his long paragraphs with these words : "And, 
Gentlemen, all this ship needed to set her right, was two 
copper bolts, two wooden trennels — nay, two old candles." 

It is impossible to describe the convulsions of laughter 
which followed this. 

As a matter of course, a style so extravagant as his 
was very open to ridicule. Jeremiah Mason is said to have 
opened an argument to a jury, after Choate, who was on 
the other side, had piled his frenzy very high before them, 
by saying, in his blunt, homely way, " Gentlemen of the 
iury, I don't know as I can Gyrate afore you as my brother 
Choate does; but I ^\ aui to ]ui!,i state a few pints." The 
contrast between the two styles was at tirst somewhat dam- 
aging to Choate. 

In another case, the opposite counsel to Mr. Choate — a 
rough man — made great laughter by closing his hostile 
description of Choate's line of argument with the declara- 
tion, that he thought " it was — altogether too big a boo for 
so small a calf." 

But Mr. Choate bore such momentary reverses with 
unflinching sobriety. His look under them seemed to in- 
dicate always that nothing could touch him; and he only 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 213 

felt regret that so mucli wit should be loasted by his adver- 
sary. 

A little sally of wit in regard to Mr. Choate, by Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, the " Autocrat of the Breaklast Table," 
is worth preserving. When Choate was obliged to disap- 
point Dartmouth College in not delivering a promised Com- 
mencement address, the little Autocrat was sent for as a 
substitute. Going up in the cars, some one asked, " Who 
is to fill Mr. Choate's place to-morrrow ?" The lively little 
Doctor jumped up, and coming forward said, "Nobody's 
going to Jill his place. I'm going to rattle round in it. a 
little while." 

At the time of Mr. Choate's great speech for Buchanan, 
in Lowell, there was a sudden settling of the floor of the 
hall where they were. A Lowell gentleman, well known as 
a lawyer and politician, volunteered to go out and examine 
the supports underneath. He did so; and, to his horror, 
found them in such a state that if there should be the 
least rush of the audience they would inevitably give way, 
the roof and floor would go together, and all be involved 
in a common ruin. With great fortitude he went quietly 
back ; and, to prove there was no dancjer^ walked the whole 
length of the crowded hall up to the platform where the 
speakers and president were. 

As he passed, Mr. Choate leaned down and asked him 
if he found danger. The gentleman, keeping his face per- 
fectly unmoved, so as not to frighten others, whispered into 
Choate's ear with characteristic abruptness, " If I can't get 
this crowd out quietly, we shall all be in h-11 in five min- 
utes." As might have been expected from so blunt and 
temble a communication, Mr. Choate's face instantly be- 
came ashy pale ; but he controlled himself and sat per- 
fectly steady. 



214 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 

The gentleman mounted the stage, assured the people 
there was no real danger ; but to guard against the mere 
possibility of danger, he advised them to withdraw quietly, 
very quietly, to the open air, where the speech would go on. 
In five minutes the hall was clear. 

Dreadful as had been the moment's shock to his feel- 
ings, Mr. Choate's humor did not even then desert him ; 
for as he stepped from the hall himself, he said to his 
friend who had made the announcement to him, " And 
did you really think, my friend, just now, that I luas 
hound for the same "place ivith you V 

An anecdote of him told me by one of the Common 
Pleas judges, as occurring in 1834, illustrates his prodi- 
gious resolution. His case was argued two days. In the 
afternoon of the first day he seemed sick and feeble. But 
on the morning of the second day, he looked so bright that 
my informant remarked to him, " You seem much brighter 
this morning, Mr. Choate." " yes," was the prompt 
reply ; " I've got a blister all across my stomach, I am 
excoriated entirely, and/f^e? quite smart." 

In another case in which this same judge was of coun- 
sel, in 1845, Mr. Choate was so weak, and liad such a ver- 
tigo, that he was compelled to hold on by both hands to 
his table, in order to steady himself while he spoke. Yet 
even thus he talked two hours ; then got five minutes' 
recess ; went to his office, took an emetic; came back and 
finished the whole argument. 

It was either in this case or another, where this same 
gentleman, my informant, was with him, that in a sudden 
lull and break in the case, while the Court was waitino- 
Choate leaned back in his chair and discoursed to his asso- 
ciates for an hour, upon the various extant editions of 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 215 

Cicero; going into details and even verbal criticisms, thus 
extemporaneously. 

In his speech in defense of the Judiciary in the Consti- 
tutional Convention, he was answering a direct appeal 
which had been made to him, as to whether he had not 
heard particular acts of the Judges commented on very un- 
favorably. He was proceeding, speaking very slowly and 
solemnly, " Sir, 1 have known and loved many men, many 
women" — (here there was a subdued titter in the house ; 
he raised himself up erect, his eyes flashed with a sublime 
ardor, as he repeated in a most solemn tone) — " aye, many 
beautiful women, of the living and the dead, of the purest 
and noblest of earth or skies ; but I never knew one, I 
never heard of one, if conspicuous enough to attract a con- 
siderable observation, whom the breath of calumny or of 
sarcasm always wholly spared. Did the learned gentleman 
who interrogates me ever know one ? ' Be thou as chaste 
as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.' " 

The effect of his truly majestic delivery of these words 
was most solemnizing. No one smiled again. It awed, 
sobered, silenced the whole house. 

It would be quite impossible, to garner up all his tell- 
ing phrases which were remembered and current in the 
talk of the Bar and the world. His statement, so epi- 
grammatic, at the New England Dinner, produced lasting 
effects: " The Puritans founded a church without a Bishop, 
a state without a King." His words about the Bible were 
memorable : " What ! banish the Bible from our schools ? 
Never, while there is a piece of Plymouth Eock left large 
enough to make a gun flint of !" Again, at the convention 
which nominated General Scott for President, he was for 
Webster ; and he said the Scott men wanted no platform, 
but " a letter in every man's breeches' pocket." 



216 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

His description is hackneyed but famous, of the party 
that, as he said, " Carry the flag, and keep step to the 
music of the Union." 

He spoke of a certain namby-pamby minister as "a 
man milhner." 

Describing some one's conduct, he said it was " cool ! 
cool as a couple of summer mornings." 

In one of the news|)aper notices drawn forth by Mr. 
Choate's death, the following passage occurred. I quote 
it because it is a fair specimen of the style of criticism 
upon him of those who, from mistake or ignorance, mis- 
judged him : — 

^' As a lawyer, he seemed to prefer cases the most devoid 
of substantial merit, not because he had any natural affin- 
ity for depravity, but for the opportunity afforded of 
exercising his legal ingenuity and displaying his unique 
eloquence. Even at the bar of Massachusetts, indulgent 
as it naturally was to the faults of its distinguished leader, 
his reputation suffered from the superfluous zeal he mani- 
fested in clearing Tirrel, the murderer and incendiary, on 
the prejjosterous theory of somnambulism, as well as from 
other eiforts of a similar kind. Prone as his hearers were 
to exult in the splendid exhibition, they could not forget 
occasionally that the lightnings of his genius were bran- 
dished with Httle regard to consequences, and that it was 
comparatively a matter of indifference to the great actor 
of the scene whether they purified the moral atmosphere 
by vindicating the cause of truth and justice, or struck 
down the fair fabrics of public virtue and public integrity." 

ISTow this is grossly unjust to Mr. Choate's memory, 
and is not true. The only cases he ever did refuse were 
criminal cases. But this Tirrel case, in particular, I hap- 
pened to know from him something about. The defense 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 217 

in that case, as he told me himself, was brought to him by 
the women and friends of TiiTel's family, who told him, 
with tears, that Tirrell was a somnambulist, and upon that 
ground they wished him defended ; and they besought 
him, almost on their knees, to save a man who had killed 
his mistress in his sleep. If ever a man has a right to a 
defense, it is when he is on trial for his life ; and if ever a 
lawyer has his greatest opportunity for usefulness, it is 
in manfully defending one whom public clamor has tried 
and convicted long before law and Courts have tried him. 
Then it is, amid the howling of the mob, that the lawyer 
is to stand forth unterrified between the mob who would 
Lynch the victim, and the criminal who has not been tried ; 
and it is for the servant of the law to cry "Peace," while 
sovereign Law examines all the record. 

But to show manifestly and for ever how falsely Mr. 
Choate's character has been impugned for his connection 
with this case, I have collected a full account of the case; 
chiefly by the aid of the gentleman whose student reminis- 
cences of Mr. Choate were ai)pended to a previous chapter 
of this book. The argument never was rejwrted in full. 
But to this present inquiry, the style of the argument is not 
material. The facts of the case, the opinions of the judges, 
the surrounding circumstances, are all important. They 
show that Tirrell, had he been hung, would have been 
hung in defiance of the great Anglo-Saxon principle of law, 
that no man shall be condemned to die while he is not 
proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Tirrell never 
was so proven; and I believe fully that Mr. Choate died in 
the sincere belief, that he killed his victim in a fit of uncon- 
scious sleep-walking, although it was never proved that he 
actually killed her at all. 

I am interested to draw the attention of all who feel at- 

10 



218 REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

tr acted toward Mr. Choate's memory, to this case; because 
it was this Tirrell case from which the idea chiefly took , 
rise that Mr. Choate was somewhat unscrupulous in liis 
defense of criminals. But there never was a greater misrep- 
resentation. Whatever he was in the earlier stages of his 
career, after he grew to maturity, he was very careful 
about his defenses on the criminal side of the Court. On 
the civil side of the Court, as I have previously described 
him, he took every thing, and fought to conquer ; but 
on the other side, he felt his responsibility to the public. 
When Professor Webster's murder case was depending, his 
fiiends applied to Mr. Choate to defend him on his charge 
of homicide. He refused the case. 

This Tirrell case has never been fully understood by the 
public, though by the profession it has been entirely and 
justly comprehended. There never was a more righteous 
acquittal oi\ a charge of murder, under our law, than that 
of Albert J. Tirrell. Judge Wilde of the Supreme Court 
was accustomed to express his entire approbation of the 
verdict, and I have reason to believe the whole Court were 
satisfied with it. 

Mr. Choate told me several years ago that he never 
thought of such a line of defense as somnambulism, but the 
friends of the prisoner came to him with tears, and he 
yielded to them. 

The day after the second trial of Tirrell, which was not 
for murder but arson, where the evidence was substantinliy 
the same as in the first, I saw Mr. Choate in his study. 
He was lying down, deadly sick with nausea and exhaustion. 
The jury were still out, and it was understood had been 
divided all night. I asked Mr. Choate if he feared their 
verdict. " No," said he ; " they may disagree, but they 
never can convict him according to our law." 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 219 

As I have often felt indignant at the comments of the 
ignorant upon Mr. Choate's conduct in this cause, it is a 
gi-atification to nie to be enabled to present the following 
statement of tlie facts ; and the line of argument pursued 
in it is also here added. The statement has been carefully 
prepared from original sources of information. 

THE ALBERT J. TIRRELL CASE. 

Perhaps no criminal case ever attracted more attention, 
or occasioned more comment upon its defense, than tliis' 
Albert J. Tirrell was indicted and tried in March, 1846, in the 
county of Suffolk, for the murder of Mrs. Bickford, on the 
morning of October 27, 1845, in the house of one Joel Law- 
rence, in Mount Vernon avenue, near Charles street, Boston. 

Tirrell belonged to Weymouth, and was respectably 
connected. He had a wife and family there ; but had led 
an irregular life for some time, and was living at this time 
with Mrs. Bickford, who had left her husband. In fact, 
Tirrell was at this very time under indictment for criminal 
connection. 

Tirrell was onlv twentv-two years old, and the deceased 
twentv-one. 

The trial was commenced March 24, 1846, before Jus- 
tices Wilde, Dewey and Hubbard, of the Supreme Court. 
Mr. Choate and Messrs. Amos B. and Annis Merrill had 
been assigned as counsel for the prisoner, and the prosecu- 
tion was conducted by S. D. Parker, Esq., county attorney 
for Suftblk. 

The case presented by the government, and developed 
by testimony, was substantially as follows : The house, in 
which the body of the deceased was found, was occui)ied by 
Joel Lawrence and family, and was of bad rej)utation. On 
the evening of the 26th of October, which was Sunday, at 



220 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

nine o'clock, Tirrell was seen in the same room witli the 
deceased, and was not afterwards seen in the house, which 
was locked up and closed for the night. About four o'clock 
in the morning of the next day, Monday, 27th of October, 
Mrs. Lawrence and another inmate of the house, heard a 
noise in Mrs. Bickford's room, then a fall, and about half 
an hour after heard a person go out of the door. Mr. Law- 
rence, who occupied a different apartment, was awakened 
between four and five, Monday, a. m., by a person going out 
of the door, and a noise, as of a groan or inarticulate sound 
in the yard, and soon after by the cry of " fire" from his 
wife. This peculiar cry outside of the house, which fol- 
lowed the opening of the door, was distinctly remembered 
by Lawrence and his wife and another inmate of the 
house. 

At about five o'clock, or somewhat after, a fireman, 
who heard the alarm, came to the house, and, with Law- 
rence, proceeded to Mrs. Bickford's room. The fire was 
still burning, and was put out by the fireman ; Lawrence 
giving little or no aid, and appearing reluctant to go into 
the room, saying that the fire was out. On the floor of the 
chamber was found the dead body of Mrs. Bickford, the 
throat cut from ear to ear, an open and bloody razor on 
the floor, and blood on the floor and bed. A mattress and 
straw bed were partially burned, and there were matches 
in the straw bed. The wash bowl contained blood and 
water, and one ear ring of deceased was torn from the ear. 
Part of the apparel of the prisoner was also found in the 
room. 

The government undertook to call as witnesses all 
the inmates of the house ; but there was no testimony 
touching the prisoner's presence in the house after nine 
o'clock on Sunday evening, and nothing relative to the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 221 

appearance of the room from four to five, a. m., of 
Monday. 

Between four and five, a. m., of the same day, Tirrell 
called at Fullam's stable, in Bowdoin Square, for a con- 
veyance to Weymouth, saying " he had got into trouble, 
and wanted me to carry him off ; that somebody had como 
into his room and tried to murder him." 

At five and a half, a. m., he called at a house occupied 
by one Head, in Ridgeway Lane, not far from Fullam's 
stable, to get two handkerchiefs. His appearance was de- 
scribed as peculiar and wild, and like that of a person in a 
stupor, when at this place; and the sounds of his voice were 
like a distressed groan. A man from Fullam's stable drove 
the prisoner to Weymouth, Avhere he remained; and thence 
wandered about until he was finally arrested in New Or- 
leans, 

An inmate of Lawrence's house had heard loud conver- 
sation between Tirrell and Mrs. Bickford in their room on 
Sunday evening. 

Such was the case against the prisoner. It can not be 
denied that there was a strong feeling against Tirrell in 
the community. The case was one of startling interest, 
resemblins: that of Robinson for the murder of Helen 
Jewett, which took place in New York about ten years 
before this time. 

The defense was opened at great length and with much 
ability by the junior counsel, Mr. Annis Merrill. Many 
points were taken in behalf of the prisoner. It was urged 
generally, that there was no positive evidence affecting 
him, and that the testimony relied uj)on by the govern- 
ment to convict him was circumstantial, and from the 
infamous inmates of a bad house, and ought not to be 
credited. There was no evidence that Tirrell was in the 



222 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

house after nine o'clock of the 26th of October ; and no 
evidence concerning the room and its appearance before 
the fireman and coroner examined it ; while, according to 
the government case, the murder took place at least an 
hour before ; that there was no motive for this alleged act 
by prisoner ; and there was a violent improbability of his 
being the murderer ; the prisoner was devotedly attached 
to the deceased ; that suicide was the more reasonable 
supposition, from the bad character and habits of the de- 
ceased ; that if the act was done by prisoner, the same was 
not done by him in a conscious state, and in his waking 
hours. 

From the evidence in behalf of the prisoner, it apj^eared 
that he was strongly attached to the deceased, and that 
she was of a violent temper ; once or twice had taken 
laudanum ; and was in the habit of keeping razors, and 
various weapons, in her possession. Seven witnesses testi- 
fied that the prisoner had been in the habit of getting up 
and walking in his sleep, from the age of four or five 
years ; and while in this state he would sometimes com- 
mit acts of violence, and utter a peculiar noise or groan. 
Three medical gentlemen of the highest character, upon 
hearing this testimony, gave their opinion that the phe- 
nomena described were those of that species of disease 
treated in medical books as Somnamhulism, the subjects 
of which are as unconscious as the victims of any insane 
delusion. 

The pecidiar noise heard in Lawrence's yard on the 
morning of the 27th, and described as uttered by the per- 
son who went out of his door between four and five a. m., 
and the peculiar sounds uttered by Tirrell on the same 
morning, as described by Head, the })risoner's counsel con- 
tended, — and the medical testimony sustained them, — 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 223 

might be the sounds of a person in the state of somnam- 
bulism. The medical witnesses were also of ojiinion that 
tlie deceased might have cut her own throat, and tlien 
jumped from the bed U}jon the floor. 

The government called no medical witnesses in rebut- 
tal. 

Mr. Choate closed for the ])risoner in an argument of 
wonderful ingenuity and brilliancy ; and was followed by 
Mr. S. D. Parker for the government in one of tliose terse 
and cogent addresses which were peculiar to this able pros- 
ecuting officer. 

It is understood that Mr. Choate preserved a very full 
copy of this speech, which was one of his ablest efforts, 
and which it is lioped may be given to the public. 

Nothing could be more liappily expressed than when, in 
his exordium, he alluded to the effect of the verdict and the 
absence of all hoiie of pardon : 

" Every juror, when he puts into the urn the verdict of 
Guilty, writes upon it also, — Let him die." 

And then what a gi'aceful and a})propriate peroration, 
in a cause of life or death, were these words : 

" Under the iron law of old Rome, it was the custom 
to bestow a civic wreath on him who should save the life 
of a citizen. Do vour dutv this dav, Gentlemen, and you 
too, may deserve the civic crown." 

The Charge to the jury was delivered by Mr. Justice 
Dewey, who gave a clear statement of the case, and their 
duties. He enlarged somewhat upon the various points 
of defense taken by the prisoner's counsel ; and on the 
subject of " somnambulism," instructed the jury that the 
same principles would apply as to a case of insanity. If 
the act was proved to have been committed by the pris- 
oner, and that he was in this state at the time, it would 



224 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

be a good defense. The Charge was clear and impartial, 
and was certainly favorable to the prisoner, in fairly com- 
mitting to the jury all his jDoints of defense, as matters for 
their inquiry and determination. 

The jury were absent in deliberation about two hours, 
and then returned a verdict of " not guilty." 

To a question by Mr. Parker for the government, the 
jury stated " that they had formed their opinion on gen- 
eral grounds, and Itad not considered the question of som- 
nambidism." 

Tirrell was again put to the bar, January 11th, 1847, 
on an indictment for arson, before Judges Shaw, Wilde, 
and Dewey. The facts developed were substantially the 
same as at the trial for murder ; but the government in- 
troduced a new witness, who swore that she passed the 
night before the alleged murder, at Lawrence's house, heard 
a person going out between four and five a. m. of the 27th 
of October; looked out, and saw that it w^as Tirrell. 

Chief Justice Shaw charged the jury on the various 
points of defense and the previous charge of his associate, 
Mr. Justice Dewey. He instructed the jury in view of the 
character of the government witnesses, and the discrepancy 
of testimony, that the testimony of the Lawrences and the 
new witness should not be relied upon, unless corroborated 
by other evidence. 

The jury returned a verdict of " not guilty.*' 

Tirrell was then sentenced to State prison, on the in- 
dictment then pending against him for adultery. 

He is now at large, as is supposed. 

The trial of Tirrill must rank among the celebrated 
cases of our country, not only for the great interest it caused 
at the time, but for the extraordinary ability displayed in 
the defense. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 225 

It will always be remembered, also, for the connection 
which Mr. Choate had with it, as one of the counsel for 
the prisoner. A great many very excellent persons have 
pronounced their judgment of condemnation upon the emi- 
nent advocate who defended the prisoner, as one who had 
misused his great talents in securing from justice a bad 
man by a frivolous defense. Some of the clergy have occa- 
sionally, in their notices of the profession, alluded to this 
case, and passed not very charitable comments upon the 
conduct of lawyers who defended bad cases. But such 
comments are unwarranted by the facts of this case. 

The very word somnambulism, in connection with this 
case, has been treated by some as bordering on the ludic- 
rous. Such persons, we feel sure, have never examined 
into the case. From the sketch which has here been given 
of the trial, it will be noticed that the prisoner was ac- 
quitted, because the government failed to make out a case 
against him ; and Mr. Choate had power to make the jury 
see this. 

In a case where human life is at stake, the law sives 
the prisoner at the bar the benefit of a doubt ; and the 
doubts, the uncertainties and the mysteries of this case, 
saved the prisoner. As intelligent a jury as ever sat in a 
Suffolk tribunal, presided over by one of our oldest North- 
End mechanics, ivere not satisfied that Tirrell was the 
murderer of Mrs. Bickford ; and they arrived- at this con- 
clusion without examining the question of somnambulism. 
Surely it is a legitimate duty of counsel to point out and 
establish the defects in the government case under the eye 
of the Court. These defects in proof, the Court acknowl- 
edged to be proper subjects of comment, and entirely for 
the jury. 

If the case had been otherwise, and the prisoner had 

10* 



226 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

been acquitted, because, on deliberation, the jury had found 
that the act had been committed by the prisoner when he 
was in an unconscious state — we have always thought the 
verdict would have been sustained by the evidence ; and 
we have the highest authority for stating that the learned 
Bench who tried the prisoner were satisfied with both ver- 
dicts. 

In fact, an eminent judge, now deceased, who presided 
at one of these trials, stated, that in his opinion, it would 
not be safe to convict on such testimony as that of the gov- 
ernment in the arson case. 

But to return to the defense of somnambulisin, and the 
flippant and unjust criticism which has reflected upon Mr. 
Choate's connection with it. 

It is not a little remarkable how plain this whole mat- 
ter stands, when all the facts are develoi^ed. Mr. Choate, 
as we have heard from his own lips, never saw Tirrell, ex- 
cept in the court house. Amos B. Merrill, Esq., junior 
counsel of the prisoner, had known Tirrell at Weymouth, 
several years before, as one of the pupils at his school. 
While there he became acquainted with the peculiar affec- 
tion to which Tirrell was subject, and from his own per- 
sonal observation ; and knew that Tirrell was a sleep-walker 
or somnambulist. When Mr. Merrill was assigned as coun- 
sel to the prisoner, he remembered this peculiarity in the 
prisoner's habits, and by investigation satisfied himself of 
its actual existence as a/acf. 

The defense was prepared by Mr. Merrill with elaborate 
care, from interviews with the prisoner in his cell, and 
with his relatives and the medical gentlemen. 

To Mr. Merrill, Tirrell declared his unconsciousness of 
committing any violence to the deceased. Mr. Choate was 
instructed by his associate in the details of the defense, 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 227 

which was sustained by competent testimony, and cor- 
roborated by the highest medical authority. So that it 
would seem that Mr. Choate has not the credit or discredit 
of originating or " getting up" this defense. 

The credible evidence was in the case and under the eye 
of a Court not prone to wink at sham defenses or inge- 
nious sophistries. Mr. Choate, relying upon this evidence 
and the weakness of the government case, triumphantly 
brought his client within the limits of a fair and legit- 
imate defense. So said the jury of Suffolk ; and in this 
result the Court acquiesced. 

This is one of those cases bristling with difficulties, 
which Mr. Choate loved to try ; but, while he almost cov- 
eted the dangerous rally and the keen encounter, he always 
wanted something real to rely upon. Like the ancient 
philosopher, give him the place whereon to stand, and he 
would move the earth. 

There were in the Tirrell case two great facts, clear to 
Mr. Choate's mind, which gave him a strong hold, and 
made him enthusiastic and irresistible. 

The first was what we might call a gi-eat pathological 
fact — the absence of motive. Mr. Choate invariably pro- 
tested — that a case of two young persons, lovers, devotedly 
attached to each other, retiring at night in the same apart- 
ment, and at early dawn — without a quarrel or other ex- 
citement — the one waking up and murdering the other, 
would be a stupendous moral miracle. 

The other feature of this history was, that the prisoner 
was known to be a somnambulist. This, Mr. Choate felt 
to be a fixed fact. The first fact was, in his view, a suf- 
ficient answer to the government case : the second was 
subsidiary, and an aid in explaining the catastrophe. 

It is not a little significant, that ten months after the 



228 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

acquittal of Tirrell on the indictment for murder, and after 
the many strictures and censures which followed it, when 
the government had been fully apprised of the defense 
which their representative professed to consider frivolous 
and unfounded — the prisoner should, upon a charge of 
arson, on the same evidence, before other judges of the 
same Court, and by another jury, he again acquitted. 

From this full, authentic, and satisfactory account of 
the facts and pleadings in this famous case it will be seen 
how shallow and baseless were all strictures upon the 
splendid advocate who alone could save the prisoner from 
an unjust death. 

Ere I close this chapter upon Mr. Choate's professional 
life I wish to add the opinion given of him by a man, him- 
self famous, a rival, a pure man, and of the most sober 
judgment. 

Judge Curtis, late of the United States Sui^eme 
Court — the judge whose name will for ever be remem- 
bered, for delivering that dissenting opinion which spoke the 
thought of the North upon the Dred Scott case — Judge Cur- 
tis presented to the Massachusetts Supreme Court the reso- 
lutions of the Bar in honor of the memory of Eufus Choate. 
When presenting them he said, among other things, these 
words. They are spoken with judicial calmness, honesty, 
and honor. And they are spoken by one who knew thor- 
oughly of what he was speaking — the subject and the man : 

"I am aware that it has sometimes been thoudit, and 
by the thoughtless or inexperienced often said, that from 
his lips ' With fatal sweetness elocution flowed/ 

" But they who have thought or said this have but an 
imperfect notion of the nature of our judicial controversies, 
or of the ability for the discovery of truth and justice which 
may be expected here. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 229 

" Such persons begin with the false assumption that 
in the comphcated cases which are brought to trial here, 
one party is altogether right and the other altogether 
wrong. They are ignorant that in nearly all cases there 
is truth, and justice, and law on both sides ; that it is 
for the tribunal to discover how much of these belongs to 
each, and to balance them, and ascertain which preponder- 
ates ; and that so artificial are the greater portion of our 
social rights, and so complex the facts on which they de- 
pend, that it is only by means of such an investigation and 
decision that it can be certainly known on which side the 
real justice is. That, consequently, it is the duty of the 
advocate to manifest and enforce all the elements of jus- 
tice, truth, and law which exist on one side, and to take 
care that no false appearances of those great realities are 
exhibited on the other. That while the zealous discharge 
of this duty is consistent with the most devoted loyalty to 
truth and justice, it calls for the exertion of the highest 
attainments and powers of the lawyer and the advocate, 
in favor of the particular party whose interests have been 
intrusted to his care. And if, from eloquence, and learn- 
ing, and skill, and laborious preparation, and ceaseless vigi- 
lance, so preeminent as in Mr. Choate, there might seem to 
be danger that the scales might incline to the wrong side, 
some compensation would be made by the increased exer- 
tion to which that seeming danger would naturally incite 
his opponents ; and I am happy to believe what he behevcd, 
that as complete security against wrong as the nature of 
human institutions will permit, has always been found in 
the steadiness, intelligence, love of justice, and legal learn- 
ing of the tribunal by which law and fact are here finally 
determined. 

" I desire, therefore, on this occasion, and in this pres- 



230 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

ence, and in behalf of my brethren of this Bar, to declare 
our appreciation of the injustice which would be done to 
this great and eloquent advocate by attributing to him any 
want of loyalty to truth, or any indifference to wrong, be- 
cause he employed all his great powers and attainments, 
and used to the utmost his consummate skill and elo- 
quence in exhibiting and enforcing the comparative merits 
of one side of the cases in which he acted. In doing so he 
but did his duty. If other people did theirs, the adminis- 
tration of justice was secured." 



CHAPTER V. 

CONVERSATIONS WITH RUFUS CHOATE. 

The Conversations detaikcl in this cha2)ter, as was said 
in the Preface, were written down at the time, or within 
an hour or two of the time of then* utterance. I always 
valued Mr. Choate's conversational advice and instruction 
so highly, that in very many instances I wrote it down as 
soon after leaving him as 1 could reach pen and paper. 

These thoughts, it must he remembered, he threw off 
extemporaneously, without any purpose hut the immediate 
one of })leasing talk. It seems to me they reveal the native 
fiber of his brain, and the mass of intellectual matter which 
habitually lay there, even more fully than his speeches and 
arguments. 

They are aiTanged in the order of time, as the events 
of his life may perhaps be supposed to color or affect his 
thoughts. 

1848. 

NOTES OF CONVERSATION. 

Mr. Choate said, in talking Avith me, one of the most 
essential things to an advocate is the study of style and 
language. 

Style and Language. — First and foremost, and all- 
important in this study, is Translation. Translate every 
day, pen in hand — most accurately sifting words and com- 
paring synonyms. 



232 liEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Cicero can be rendered so easily, Thucydides and Taci- 
tus are preferable. 

The object is to enrich one's vocabulary, acquire a 
flow of uncommon and not universally and readily occur- 
ring words. It is easy to acquire a facile flow of common 
languao-e. 

Burke (superior to Cicero), Bolingbroke, Sam Johnson, 
The English prose writers, as well as orators, to be perused 
— Shakspeare, Milton. 

Laiv. — I advise you to labor to become a great lawyer, 
foundation of statesmanship. Study six hours per diem. 
Grand resource of life. It strengthens mind. You should 
attend Moot courts. 

History. — English, Sharon Turner preeminent. Amen- 
ities — Hume down to Stuarts, good, though superficial. 
History of Common Law — later, better. Gibbon to be 
read just as soon as get ready for it. It must be the foun- 
dation of modern history. 

Classics. — Originals, to be read — Greek and Latin — 
chronologically. Homer first, of Greek; and Plautus of 
Latin. Modern and popular histories by men who have 
devoted lives to comparing conflicting authorities. Thirl- 
wall to be read with Mitford. The first Whig, last Tory, 
Thirlwall rather to be jjreferred, Grote's new work very 
fine ; not quite so deep as Thirlwall. 

Thus, in these works which we did read in our youth, 
we renew and preserve a perpetual childhood — an eternal 
youth. 

October 3d, 1848. — Another conversation follows some- 
what the same train of thought. 

The Demosthenian is the style for oratoric success 
before the people — sharp and strong — might be less 
bald. 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS C HO ATE. 233 

The Ciceronian for literary and juridical forms. Would 
not be popularly effective now. 

Always prepare, investigate, compose a speech, pen in 
hcmd. This sitting down and just thinking, unless a man's 
blind, is exceptionable. Having written a sj)cech, need not 
confine yourself to it. 

Mr. Webster has always written when he could get a 
chance. He has read Burke much. Shakspeare studied. 
Milton not much — it is too poetical, with which he has 
little sympathy. 

Webster must be considered very successful as a public 
orator. Everett doesn't warm us up extremely. 

Webster a nice eater — not a gross one. Youth is the 
time to husband, and not try your constitution. 

August 13, 1849. — This conversation illustrates how 
off-hand and ready all Mr. Choate's classic thoughts were. 

He came sauntering into his office in good spirits this 
morning, and entered at once, as if his mind was brimming, 
into converse. 

Twiss' Livy is fhe one for you. You mustn't read Livy 
with the idea of getting any facts. It's all a splendid ro- 
mance. Horace and Juvenal are for the bar. Virgil con- 
tains nothing for quoting there, so terse, pithy, sententious. 
Dean Swift worthy to be read ; he's a writer who repels, 
not one whom we love. Sam Johnson revolutionized En- 
glish, introduced a harmony, balance, rhythm, unknown 
before. 

August 22, 1849. — A few days after the foregoing, 
as he stood writing at a desk, he stopped and seemed to 
wish to relieve his dry legal annotating, by talk. Asking 
him some questions about Ireland, he replied; The Celt is 
poor stock. 

The French are veiy courageous, are impetuous, mer- 



234 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

curial, daring. Can't stand before the English. Beaten 
for a thousand years, Cressy, Agincourt. Fontenoy was an 
almost solitary exception, but it was gained in gi'eat meas- 
ure, liowever, by the Irish. 

English — it is not settled that they can be driven back 
by boarding-pike or bayonet by Americans. Thus the 
Chesapeake was carried. The Constitution had from one 
to two thirds British seamen in action with the Guerriere. 
Hull said he felt intense solicitude lest they should come 
aft, and ask to be excused from fighting. 

The English is the only breed that sjjontaneously , not 
conventionally, resents the imputation of the lie. 

September 5. — Choate — Change of study, although 
great relief, not enough, without physical relaxation, I 
have worked hard this last month of recreation, in general 
studies. 

I study harder when not legally working than when I 
am, frequently. 

A man, by forty, achieves his main feats of acquisition 
and training. I don't know when, though, I have de- 
voured, been greedier for, had a sharper appetite for learn- 
ing and thought, than this last month, or had a keener 
sense of the shortness of life. 

Our general studies give one such delightful trains of 
thought, take us out of our common round of ideas. After 
a fortnight's trial of a vexing cause, beaten and dispirited, 
I have next morning taken up my classic or other books, 
and in an hour dispelled the cloud. 

Napoleon was the greatest man since Caesar. I agree 
with Professor Wilson, the greatest for a thousand years. 
Charlemagne must be treated as measurably a myth. 
The pictures of Napoleon are too smooth and handsome, 
not rugged, hard enough. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 235 

Wellington was really surprised at Waterloo. 

Not generally known that the English line during the 
day of Waterloo retired several hundred yards. If Grouchy 
had kept Blucher off, Napoleon would have beaten. 

I'm reading Niebuhr for amusement. Dryest and hard- 
est stuff. Explodes all others but his own construction. 
He is questionable, till second Punic war, from imperfec- 
tion of data. 

September 15th, 1849. — Choate: Pinkney was one of the 
very greatest of lawyers. Legare no j^ractical tact ; great 
civilian. General Jones man of superior genius. 

CtBsar had character as well as intellect. (He in this 
implied that Cicero had not.) A man of more learning 
than Bonaparte; who was as great a man, however, 

Bonaparte would call learned men around him, and see 
through a thing at a glance. 

His solacing himself with books, and never complain- 
ing, except for efect, at St. Helena, implied great power 
and magnanimity of mind. He was about as happy as he 
would have been here, had he got to America. He would 
never have been quiet here, for the France which recalled 
his ashes would have recalled his body. 

Campaign of 1814 was his magnum opus. There's 
nothing like it in modern war. 

When he said he was certain of dying, in two years, at 
St. Helena, and calmly faced it, there was yet a saving 
doubt in his own mind. 

Russia possesses no aggressive power. No danger to 
Europe from her. 

Septeinher 17th, 1849. — Choate remarked, in conversa- 
tion to-day, " I've read repeatedly in my youth till two 
o'clock at night," 



236 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 



1850. 



Sunday, February 24^/^— Erskine, Mr. Choate said 
to-day, was, in some degree, an example adverse to the 
necessity of classic culture, for his only classics were En- 
glish : Milton's poetry, and Burke. Macaulay is not a 
historical style — an essayist ; his glitter wearisome in a 
history. Hume and Robertson both superior for style. 

A student must eat little. He himself is subject, 
every two weeks, to sick headache. Gets an hour a day, 
for vigorous exercise, at six in the morning. 

A great mind can't relax in mere pleasure-hunting, 
long. One should read in summer, but books of a lighter 
character. Still always pursue system. 

I asked him, Why don't you go to Newport and have 
some fun ? 

" If I went to Newport with the intention of abandon- 
ing myself to pleasure, I should be compelled to hang my- 
self by five o'clock in the evening." Still he said he would 
go out of town every summer ; a railroad would allow one's 
mornings in town. 

There has been no day of Webster's life, for thirty 
years, that his mind hasn't been laboriously and seriously 
exercised. Eight or nine hours a day enough for all work, 
legal and literary. 

Napoleon, if he had not been employed in public 
affixirs, would have become a great mathematician, a La 
Place. 

CfBsar, the most remarkable man of the world; with all 
his revels, must have immensely labored. 

Society is mere trifling. One should go into it to 
relax and to keep up relations to it, and to polish man- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 237 

ners. If genius and culture enter society, thev throw off' 
their character and bend to its rules. 

Six hours a day is as much of a man's mind as law 
ouglit to have. After a vexatious case, half an hour's 
reading of a favorite autlior relieves, and cheers, and 
restores my mind. A man's gi'eat work, for four years 
after college, is to perfect his mind. 

The present political crisis is, says Mr. Choate, the most 
ap})alling of any since the Union. There is a great lack 
of a feeling of nationality — all that keeps together ; but 
the great advantage of the federal league is that it preserves 
peace. 

But there must be a limit to our magnitude. When 
the foreign relations of the different i)arts become decidedly 
antagonistic, that is the barrier and the limit. 

The Union can't endure for ever. If this crisis is sur- 
vived, it may go on for one hundred years. 

Massachusetts politics are narrow. In a moral point of 
view, she has no right to touch the subject of slavery. 
These zealots forget that there may be conflicting duties, 
and that it is duty to support the compromise of slavery, 
to secure universal peace and prosperity. Massachusetts 
continually breaks the foedus. Southern States homoge- 
neous in productions and characters peculiarly adapted to 
form a separate State. Southern leaders are now busy, (he 
said ironically,) on that really delightful task, the creation 
of a new Commonwealth. Winthrop thinks, on the whole, 
this crisis will be surmounted. 

May 12, 1850. — Had a long interview with Choate this 
afternoon in his library. 

New England, he says, is somewhat anti-progressive ; 
against acquisition of territory ; free trade. She should 



238 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

catch that great gale of impulse, enthusiasm and enterprise, 
which is ever agitating and giving tone to America. 

Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay have their distinct depart- 
ments — Mr. Webster, the philosopher ; Clay, the man of 
action. The former should write the state and diplomatic 
papers and legal opinions of an administration ; the latter 
should carry it on. As a leader of a party, knowing on 
just what ground to lead them, what issues, and how to 
present them. Clay is unrivaled in this country. 

In the Jackson day. Clay thought the bank issue should 
be taken out of view, and was clearly right in opposition 
to Webster ; for the latter didn't discover, as usual, till 
too late, that sentiment had changed. 

Mr. Webster has been at least twelve years behind his 
glory and his country. He didn't find out till well ad- 
vanced that he stood a chance for the Presidency. Mean- 
while, he had hit right and left, and made many enemies. 
He had, moreover, got a set of cold New England manners, 
and had thoroughly conformed himself for home consump- 
tion. But Clay has had the presidency in view from the first. 

Clay patiently spins again the broken web of his schemes. 
I'm glad he's there in the Senate. Can compromise, if any 
one can. 

The defense in the Tirrell case, of somnambulism, was 
suggested to me by the friends of the accused on my first 
retainer. 

The defense of Professor Webster I wouldn't have any 
thing to do with, because they wouldn't admit it to be 
manslaughter. On that I would have taken my stand. 

Sir Henry Bulwer is the second diplomat in England, 
Sir Stratford Canning the first. He is at Constantinople, 
the point of contact with the other great power of Europe, 
Russia. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 239 

SejJtemher 2Ath. — Saw Mr. Choate for the first time 
since his return from Em-ope. 

He enjoyed himself rarely, spending most of his time 
in viewing the localities of the Continent in preference to 
the dinners of London. He thinks he should never have 
time to visit any part of Europe again but Italy and 
Kome, which he did not see. Our conversation was gen- 
eral. 

He showed me a new and immense edition of Everett. 
The portrait therein he thought fine, " full of his earlier 
hope." Everett, he said, announces a work on International 
Law. The field is too nnich occupied. Mackintosh's Rec- 
lamation and Wheaton cover all. The great question of 
neutrals and belligerents on the seas is the main modern 
question; and that is yet open, to be settled by war, etc. 

Webster has as living and enduring a reputation as 
that kind of fame ever reaches. Brougham has more tal- 
ent, and is less self-indulgent, but will not live so long in 
memory. 

A book, however, is the only immortality. 

Thinks Webster is no coward. His last etfort on the 
compromise, by which "he saved the South," does not 
look so. 

In the outset of his career, his Federalism difiered from 
his allies. He was opposed to Hartford Convention. His 
life has been fettered. 

Clay's reputation he thinks is ephemeral. He has 
allied himself with no living and continuing course of 
policy. Tarifi" which is his, is questionable in policy. 
His speeches, however, show sagacity and wisdom, and 
read full as well as the younger Pitt's. 

Erskine will live in the speeches reported hij himself. 
Cicero in his eternal writings. Though later writers of 



240 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

the last thirty years are disposed not to side with Middle- 
ton, but to hold Cicero to have been a coward and trim- 
mer. 

He says he saw Macaulay and Brougham very satisfac- 
torily. The former is a most impressive man ; his talk is 
epigrammatic and dominant. His MSS. is very blotted, 
every third word corrected — ^his conversation is a trans- 
cript of his style. 

He talked with me (Choate) about the England of 
Addison compared with the England of the jiresent. 

The portrait of him in the American edition of his 
History is good. 

Speaking of an English statesman, Choate said : His 
habits are so bad it's an even chance he'll be drunk at a party. 
He's no excuse for debauchery, in his age, for he has all 
learning to fall back on ; all fine and sweet and great veins 
of thought. These Erskine had not ; and when he left his 
practice, his senility and vacuity combined against him. 

Erskine spoke the best English ever spoken by an 
advocate. It was learned from Burke and Milton. 
It's the finest, richest, and most remarkable English ex- 
tant. I (Choate) have read a page aloud {clard voce, not 
viva voce) since my return, daily. 

Burke will live for ever. 

Brougham's style is very classic. A classic idiom is 
beautiful incorporated in English. His Reform speech pero- 
ration is fully Ciceronian. " To me much meditating." 
Webster's idiom is not at all classic. His classics were 
laid on late in life. He knows that the ancients spoke 
grandly and simply; but what he speaks is his own nat- 
ural style. 

I have bought $500 worth of books abroad. 

I (Choate) like law, because, being of positive nature. 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 241 

it is — unlike morals aud politics — sure ground. You 
feel a degree of certainty in reading the exjiosition of a 
topic. 

Still, it is learning we can't cany to another state of 
existence. A mind not naturally fond of it may cultivate 
a liking. After sixty, one don't like to study any thing. 
A mind confined exclusively to law is narrow, and not of a 
high order. Other and various learning indispensable, as 
we gather clearness from seeing things in various relations. 
Coke and Bacon were universally learned. 

Six hours a day, four of study and two of lucubration 
and legal talk, are amply enough. The mind burdened, 
loses its memory and alacrity, and originality. The legal 
mind and subject is not the highest. But Law is the true 
training of the statesman, both for its learning and the 
habits of mind it begets. Both may be kept uj^; as in 
Webster, politics aud law ; though the world usually re- 
venges itself for a double repute, by attributing superfici- 
alit}' in one branch to the owner. 

For the jury, it is a blunder to profess to "just come 
into the case," etc. ; you want to impress them with the 
idea that you have studied it deeply. 

Webster concentrates his thought in WTiting, in his 
brief, in a few compact and telling propositions, by enun- 
ciating which from the paper, at the close, he presents his 
thought with great power. 

Generally the object at the Bar must be to present 
common things in an uncommon and striking way. His 
biographer was not quite lawyer enough to write " Wirt's 
Life," though it's a very good and well-written affair. 

You ought to read Tacitus over and over to catch his 
idiom — a certain exact fidelitv to the orig-inal is essential, 
to improve by it. In the Annals^, particular lives are more 

11 



242 EEMINISCENCES OF BUFUS CHOATE. 

valuable ; Tiberias is exquisitely drawn — so mucb better 
than Suetonius. 

These terse writers have the style which the Bar should 
affect ; the Ciceronian is too diffuse and loose. 

Sallust ought to be studied and written, particularly 
his Introductions. He was as much of a roue and blase 
as Solomon; and speaks as he would. 

Quintilian is admirable. He gives more of the art of 
rhetoric ; and you catch from him more of the trick of the 
trade. 

Speeches of Thucydides worthy of close study ; but 
the course of the narrative is so even and uniform as to be 
hardly so improving as others. 

Professor Webster's confession, he (Choate) says, ad- 
raits murder in law. I, said Choate, never would have let 
him so word it. 

Sir Kobert Peel, says a writer in BlacJcivood, probably 
Alison, had an adaptive, not a creative mind. Indeed, a 
governing statesman in a popular government of a ma- 
jority must be such ; for the policy of an age, the opinion 
of the majority, is the result of the thought of fifty years 
previous. It takes that time, for the reasonings of great 
and original thinkers to become popularized. It takes that 
time, for the stream to flow down from the mountain 
sources over the level and wide plain. An original states- 
man far in advance of his age, therefore, can not govern his 
own generation, but luill govern the succeeding one. 

Peel had not, either, that heroic order of mind which 
wins the support most delightful to the magnanimous 
spirit, that of free, unrewarded admiration. His eloquence 
lacked the divina mens, the burning enthusiasm, the 
breathing thoughts which sweep like tempests over 
minds. 



RLMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 243 

December 22d. — A long conversation with Mr. Choate 
on Eloquence and Law to-day. 

Pope, in English, Horace, in Latin, have the mastery 
of the finesses — the exquisite niceties, the curiosa felicitas 
of speech. 

I am very much in favor of translating from the class- 
ics, as an oratorio preparation ; habitual. 

Writing parts of speeches is very important. This 
every orator, from Cicero down, commends. It prevents 
one's speech growing common, and colloquial, and flatting 
out. 

Mistake to think Burke was not in his prime a great 
orator. Gibl)on says he listened to liim with infinite 
delight. In his later productions, as he was more imag- 
inative, so he was more balanced and rhythmical in his 
periods and sentences. Undoubtedly this balance and 
harmony of period, a musical and rounding act, is neces- 
sary to hold the attention of the audience very long. 

The balanced period of Macaulay, Johnson and Gib- 
bon differs from Burke's balance of sentence as the speaker 
differs from the writer. Each phrase of theirs is independ- 
ent, except by the connection of thought. You're com- 
pelled, in reading it aloud, to close ujd at the end of every 
sentence, 

Reading Burke aloud is a capital exercise. 

Harrison Gray Otis had this balance and harmony of 
period to a very high extent. He had also a peculiar 
expression of voice sometimes which I can't describe ; but 
it was obvious even at his dinners. 

Tristram Burgess had it, and perhaps it was the pecu- 
liarity of a school. It was the expression of high breeding, 

Erskine was a very vehement speaker. A gentleman 
who heard him told me (Choate) that he has frequently 



244 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

seen liim, in addressing Ci^mj,jum2) uj) and hiock his feet 
together before lie touched the floor again ; and, indeed, 
how could he have earned off many things which occur in 
his speeches except by great vehemence, such as " I trem- 
ble at the thought \" The Indian in Stockdale's case! and 
" I will bring him before the court \" and again, " By 
God, the man who says this is a rufiian." 

Erskine was, however, very judicious in his forensic 
flights ; never made a blunder. 

The management of his case, too, was admirable. Mas- 
ter of every art, and trick, and subtlety and contrivance, 
But, after all, he was a very singular, and, in some degree, 
an inexplicable fellow. 

Of a great English statesman Choate said. He is not, in 
my judgment, worthy the name of orator. He has no 
heart, and can not, therefore, be an orator. He is an 
unprincipled man. He is pedantic. One of his passages, 
I remember, is stolen bodily from Cicero. He frequently 
steals whole pages, which, by his tremendous vehemence, 
he so incorporates into his spoken delivery that it is not 
susiiectecL 

Webster, in his prime, was a prodigious orator, I 
think. He has to some degree a balance of period. He 
can give an effect, though, to single passages, greater than 
any man I ever saw. Webster, in his prime, was far more 
spirited than now. You can perceive his falling off even 
in conversation. 

Clay was a great orator. His language was such as an 
absorbing mind would naturally pick up in thirty years' 
intimacy with thorough-bred men. It is quite equal to 
William Pitt's. 

I have seen him in the middle of a speech in the Sen- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 245 

ate completely Jlabhergasted for Avant of a pinch of snuff. 
That is the only stimulus I ever knew him use. 

Demosthenes had, in addition to iron logic and massive 
reason, an awful vehemence, perfectly tempestuous and 
boisterous ; a diction, every word of which was clean cut 
and sterling, like stamped gold ; a harmony of numbers 
also. Legare's article in the New York Review on him, is 
the best thing ever written in English about him. He was 
very common sense and straightforward. 

Calhoun was a great rcasoner and logician ; arid as a 
desert, no pretensions to genuine eloquence?. He stood up 
straight, and spoke clearly some thirty minutes, generally. 
He spoke as Euclid would have spoken. He was full 
of fine-spun distinction ; lacked, in later days, common 
sense. 

He lived two lives ; for, being Monroe's Secretary of 
War, he expected to succeed J. Q. Adams as President. 
At that time he was altogether the first young man in the 
nation. But when Jackson came up, he saw — ^for he had 
perfect sagacity, and could see a great way into the future 
— that his day was over, his chance was gone. From that 
time he became one-sided, mischievous, and making good 
evil, always. He had no generous joys; was of a saturnine 
cast. He was not, perhaps, wiVJully wicked; but he was 
disappointed to death. 

Law. — Unless one takes hold of the law with determina- 
tion to be a great laioyer, it's a poor concern, and uninter- 
esting ; but a love of it may he hegotteii. After mastering 
its rudiments, it is, with all its rewards, as interesting and 
attractive as any other department of serious, laborious 
thought. 

For five or six years at the beginning I gave myself 
ivholly to it, which is essential to making jorogress in it. 



246 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

The mind capable of excelling in moral pliilosopliy or in 
pure mathematics, ought to succeed in law. 

I recommend Common-placing in law, not writing a 
digest or cream of Avhat you read ; but mention, under 
proper heads, in legal common-place book, a good author- 
ity, etc., a good point, a good analysis, a good conclusion. 

An admirable practice is to take a case in the books, 
read the arguments and judgment, and make out a regular 
brief, having consulted all the authorities, etc., just exactly 
as if you were about to argue it before the Bench, This 
is eminently useful, as fixing the points and cases eternal in 
mind, and is an admirable discij^line in legal speech, legal 
forensics, legal address. Its only difficulty is, the time it 
consumes. I (Choate) did it in summer, in the long vaca- 
tion. I have kept it up till lately. 

I (Choate) never read a new book, as, for instance, a 
Patent Book, even noio, without breaking it more or less 
into two or three legal common-place books. 

To read a book straight through is stupid indeed. But 
you may make it the guide to an examination and study of 
the subject it treats of — as, for example, " Long on Sales." 
Consult cases therein referred to, and Chitty on Contracts, 
etc. 

Lord Brougham's " Statesmen" is a very shallow work. 

Another conversation, about the same time, bears no 
date. It is as follows : 

Mr. Choate says. Judge Woodbury is in many respects 
remarkable. Used to study sixteen hours a day, always very 
laborious — traveled with book — studies too much — over- 
tasks and clouds his mind. He has, from his original ele- 
vation to the Bench at twenty-seven years of age, disciplined 
and improved his mind by ivritten compositions. They 
are well considered as opinions, contentious as arguments. 



KEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 247 

A man may read without much growth of mind, or 
accession of power. Woodbury is the next democratic 
candidate for the presidency, probably. 

Used to sleep on a board, in order not to prolong his 
repose. Had a mirror full length to practice speaking be- 
fore. 

He was of a liberally disposed mind. Smithsonian, etc., 
he always favored; but singularly deficient in taste and 
accomplishments in the helles lettres, and polite letters, and 
literature generally. 

Judge Story, by hard study, produced himself far be- 
yond his early promise. He and J. Q. Adams both grew 
stronger as they grew older. He rose from each " opinion," 
bigger than before. 

1851. 

March. — Mr. Choate said recently that even noiu, he 
practices (in summer leisure) the writing out a law point, 
so as to present it in the most effective manner to The Court, 
simply as a discij^line. 

He remarked, When I was with Wirt, I heard Pinkney 
speak three days. The first two days he tore himself all 
to pieces ; but the third day, with his vast command of 
words rolling out, it was inexpressible music. He had a 
tough head. 

1852. 

January 4th. — Talking with Mr. Choate to-day about 
the dryness and sluggishness of mind which the exclusive 
study of law produces, he said. That is most natural. 
The study of law, like the study of any severe abstract 



248 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

science, takes a man out of connection with the common 
thoughts of men, and out of sympathy with the common 
heart. Intrinsically, too, it is deadening to the feelings, 
and dwarfing to the imagination. 

A youth just graduated has a vast advantage over a 
new-fledged lawyer. His classics are all fresh, his senti- 
ments warm and high, and he is unfettered by a complexity 
of rules, either from science or from decorum. 

The English bar have made just this mistake. Gradu- 
ating from college, full of fervor and inspiriting thought, 
they soon observe that a man is nothing unless he concen- 
ters his total energy on some point. Accordingly, they 
bend to the law. It demands, at first, an exclusive devo- 
tion. Two or three years are thus passed. The founda- 
tions of a legal mind are thus laid, but all eloquent stir- 
rings and impulses of mind are scotched. If noio the 
student would revert to and revive his classics and im- 
agination, his impulsive sentiments and his high ardors; 
and if he would carry on this process jjaH passu with his 
dry and killing law, he would become, as might many an 
English barrister who is a mere barrister, a great advo- 
cate. But the English bar, when, at the close of their 
severe groundwork preparatory study, they found them- 
selves husky and barren, plunged deeper into the desert 
of bare law, and were never heard of more save in the 
courts. Many of them graduated with all the foundations 
laid for an accomplished, eloquent man — they became mere 
laioyers. 

The culture of expression should be a specific study ^ 
quite distinct from the invention of thoudit. Lanouaw 
and its elements, words, are to be mastered by direct, 
earnest labor. A speaker ought daily to exercise and air 
his vocabulary, and also to add to and enrich it. Transla- 



REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS C II GATE. 249 

tion should be pursued with these tivo objects, to bring up 
to the mind and employ all the words you already oivn, 
and to tax and tor^ment invention and discovery and tlie 
very deepest memory, for additional, rich, and admirably 
expressive words. In translating, the student should not 
put down a word till ho has thought of at least six syn- 
omjms or varieties of exj)ression, for the idea. I w(nild 
have him fastidious and eager enough to go; not unfre- 
quently, half round his library pulling down books, to 
hunt up a word — the word. 

Dictionaries are of great service in this filling up and 
fertilizing of diction. Pinkney had all the dictionaries which 
he could buy, from Richardson to Webster. You don't 
want a diction gathered from the newspapers, caught from 
the air, common and unsuggestive ; but you want one Avhose 
every word is full freiglited with suggestion and associa- 
tion, with beauty and power. If you want to see the power 
derived from loords, read one of Pinkncy's early speeches 
made before he visited England, and one of his last when 
he reigned monarch of the Bar. I heard his last great argu- 
ment, when, by his over work, he snapped the cord of his 
life. His diction was splendidly rich, copious, and flowing. 
Webster followed him, but I could not help thinking he 
was infinitely dry, barren, and jejune. 

Webster uses common words, but yet of them he strives 
for those which are pictorial and full-freighted. 

Judge Story's English was very common place and 
wishy-washy. His was a mere fluency, a rattle-clap com- 
mon English. He nev^er had time, amid his sjdenclid legal 
accom})lishments, to enlarge his vocabulary. 

In addition to translating, talking is an excellent dis- 
cipline. It exercises all those words which one has at 
ready command. You want to use your stock continually, 

11* 



250 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

or it will rust. Buchanan, the foreign missionary, once ob- 
served that he doubted not, he had laid up in his memory 
one hundred thousand words, which were never employed ; 
but which, by a little use, he would fully command. The 
English of Shakspeare — that is, the diction — Choate said 
he esteemed very common. 

Style, or an " elegant method of arranging the thouglit, 
is powerful to persuade as well as to please," as says Sir 
William Jones. Upon the vast importance of this, Choate 
entirely coincides with him. He says, for instance, the 
narrative of a simple assault case will instantly reveal 
the true artist. Cicero is undoubtedly the best orator to 
study for oratorio arrangement of the leading thoughts, and 
the minor thoughts ; and for the divisions, sentences, and 
members of sentences. Tacitus is obviously composed for 
the eye, not the ear. 

The laws of arrangement of thought, hig and little, are 
prescribed by the constitution of the human mind, and 
multiply the power of the thoughts, with the most ilht- 
erate. The general structure and the detailed making up 
should tend to the climax ; the thought, of divisions of 
discourse, and of the sentences, continually rising and swell- 
ing to the close. The literal climax itself is a very ener- 
getic arrangement of an idea. The antithesis — the power- 
ful contrast of different thoughts and of different features 
of the same thought — is valuable for vivacity. Very effect- 
ive, also, is the epithet — a truly great arm of assault. 

William Pitt was indebted for his cliarm of oratory 
mainly to his voice and his periods. These were equally 
and sometimes beautifully balanced, and most harmoni- 
ously constructed. The musical tide rode on with a fine 
fiow. 

Macaulay's speeches, with their exquisite art of com- 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 251 

position, were, in the House of Commons, very efFectivo 
and captivating. 

A Lawyer should maintain a daily converse with Cicero 
and the ancients ; but as their turn of mind was in many re- 
spects so different from ours, it is important to qualify and 
correct their influences by an equally constant and unflag- 
ging study of great modern orators, their thoughts, and 
their expressions. I would at all times, therefore, have by 
me some 07ie modern orator, in whom at least a page should 
be read daily. 

But with this cultivation of words and sentences — this 
Ciceronian analysis of the whole art of composition, one 
must remember that he needs to be for ever loading and 
storing the mind loith thoughts. The whole range of polite 
literature should be vexed for them. They are the mate- 
rials, the topics, out of which ilhistration and argument 
spring. Read Bacon ; Burke is all out of Bacon. Read 
Grattan and Sheridan ; they are good suggestives. Also, 
diligently turn (versate manii) Lord Erskine. Fox is to 
be read. He had ten times tlie genius of Pitt, in whom 
very little genuine eloquence shines. Burke, of course. 
Although he was not always appreciated by the House 
of Commons, which was then a mere mob, he would to- 
day, in our Senate, be listened to with tears. He was 
often too Ions:, though, it must be admitted. 

Chatham's studies were very wide. His English is 
vastly before his son's. 

A man should pre-write his speeches, for several rea- 
sons ; one, that you may be swre you get to the bottom of 
your subject, and thoroughly understand it, through and 
through, a mastery which you can't be sure of in any other 
way. Another reason is, that you may have, in speaking, 
the confidence and ease flowing from the certainty tha,t 



252 REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 

you can't break down ; and, once more, that you may 
fully know the whole field you are about traveling over in 
speech, and the precise relation to the whole of each part. 
Besides, extempore discourse must always be unequal and 
uncertain. 

The question as to the advantage of pre-writing must 
now be considered as settled. Whitefield, field-preacher as 
he was, nevertheless preached his sermon the tenth time 
far better than the first. 

This written matter must be well-memorized in mind, 
even though as in the case of a lecture, the papers lie 
before you. For no matter, can be well delivered that does 
not lie more fully in the mind than the eye, in an instant, 
is able to lodge it there. 

And now, to complete and finish this oratorio disci- 
pline, there must be practice in Elocution. Chesterfield, 
in his letters to his son, said, " Manner is of as miccJi im- 
po7^tancc as matter." He said he at one time determined 
to make himself the best speaker in Parliament, and he 
made himself so. The cm})hases and the cadences are to 
be severely attended to ; and also the fall of the voice on 
the close of the members of sentences. 

After a speech is all prepared, then, just before speak- 
ing, it ought to be ivarmed up in the mind. 

Ear7iestness is always essential ; by which I mean, 
being ivide-aivake and spirited. 

The maxim " orator Jit" is tmdotibtedly trite. With 
fair natural gifts, there's many a man who could make 
himself an orator. 

Mr. Webster's best oratorical effort was the Adams and 
Jefferson eulogy. That produced an extraordinary effect. 

There is an anecdote of Hamilton, illustrating what I 
have said of the value of writing as a preparative, in re- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 253 

spect to full and deep tlionght ; Hamilton made the great- 
est argument ever uttered in this country. It was on the 
law of libel, and l)_y it he stami)ed upon the mind of this 
country, the principle that in an action for libel, the truth, 
if uttered without malice, was a justification. Upon the 
night previous to the argument, he tcrote out every word 
of it ; then he tore it up. He was, by writing, fully pre- 
pared ; it lay very fully in his mind ; and, not to be cramped 
and fettered by a precise verbal exactness, he tore it to 
pieces. Theii he spoke and conquered. 

One thing unlocks the secret of Pinkney's intellectual 
affluence. He made it a rule, from his youth, never to see 
a fine idea without committing it to memory. 

When in England, he had' a splendid schooling. 
Burke's tradition was still fresh. Pitt and Fox were in 
their glory. Siddons and Kemble trod the boards, and 
Erskine filled the forum. However he pretended to depre- 
ciate Erskine, he always took care to hear him. 

Bolingbroke is rich and glorious. Showing me a very 
fine engravino; of him, he observed that he had a Ccesarean 
head. 

He remarked that Kossuth was truly a most eloquent 
man. His prayer, and his speech in England, when he 
paused — "I thought I saw again the millions of my native 
land, and heard them shout — Liberty or Death ;" these he 
considers the most eloquent passages which he has seen of 
his speeches. 

. The Bar dinner to him in New York was not attended 
by very many of the lawyers. They sold their tickets, 
and consequently the audience which hissed Judge Duer 
was hardly one half composed of professional men. 

Kossuth has warm sensibilities, an ardent imagination, 
and, more than all, an object of impassioned interest to 



254 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOA.TE. 

him and to us. His eloquence, were it not for the irresist- 
ible attraction of the theme, would be far less movinf and 
popular than the extraordinary degree in which we see it 
now. 

Henry Clay had the best education in the world for an 
orator — an active jjolitical life. His mind at two or three 
periods in his life has been distended by the great tliouglds 
of the crisis. The war of 1812 he understood, and Calhoun 
understood. He saw what it was going to do for us, by its 
moral effect upon us and u2)on other people — to make us a 
first-class power on earth. His industrial policy was 
another stretcher for his mind. 

They tell in Washington an anecdote of Judge Story 
and Clay which is spicy. The judge was rattling on one 
evening, and among other things observed, that he wished 
he'd been in Webster's place at that time (the time when 
Webster made his first speech on the commercial policy, 
and opposed to Clay). Clay looked up at this remark, 
and quietly but cuttingly observed, " I ivish you had." 

Brougham has hate and anger, the passions which make 
the vehement and bitter speech. 

In lecturing, remember that the lecture has its own 
rule. It presumes that you undertake to edify. Accord- 
ingly I (Choate) think it's an affront to an audience for a 
man to stand before them loith no notes, and undertake to 
rattle off, ajDjjarerdly extempoi^e, what it is assumed will 
instruct them. Occasionally, also, it's a relief to an au- 
dience for the speaker to turn to his notes, or to read an 
extract from a book. The more passionate parts, of course 
should be fully committed ; and the whole discourse should 
be fresh in the mind. Neither in a lecture nor in a speech 
do you want to keep bursting out all the time in high 
passages. The thing's impossible. Much of the dead 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 255 

level always must be merely instructive, and informing, 
and strong, and suggesting, and will not delight all. 

One man with a few grains of ideas will, by the mas- 
tery of expression, do more than another with a bushel. 

Chatham's English was by many degrees finer than 
his son's. His studies had been wide. 

And so ends this conversation, which was one of the 
most interesting and practical I ever enjoyed with Kufus 
Choate. 

P. S. to tlic above. — Choate, in his conversation, said 
that Burke was the best orator to practice elocution upon, 
he being " half way between Bacon and Pitt." 

February 14. — When I (Choate) was in college, I read 
McCormick, a book unfriendly to Burke, and which col- 
lects the various aspersions upon him. The margin is com- 
pletely covered with notes in my hand, such as " d d 

rascal," etc., I was so indignant at attacks on Burke. The 
story of Burke's stimulating with hot water is there re- 
tailed. 

He said he thought H. Gr. Otis a far higher order of man 
than the shallow rhetorician. He was a good lawyer, but at 
twenty-eight diverged from it to politics. He hadn't, how- 
ever, stocked his mind with the maxiins, the ideas, the 
knowledges, which form the very best material of a great 
orator. 

April 19, 1852. — Mr. Choate said, in a talk to-day ; 
Sickness, and lassitude, and depression, are the common 
obstacles and trials of the march and temper of ambition. 
That only ivhich endures unto the end, is the triie gold. 
I told him of a young college friend of mine discouraged 
by sickness and retiring from business and aspiration. 
" He wasn't willing to pay the price for fame, then." said 
Choate. 



256 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C 11 GATE. 

Cicero he considers to have had less fire and unction 
tlian Demosthenes. He was, however, very vehement — at 
one time, by his impetuosity and violence of action, se- 
verely shattering his constitution. But his mind was in- 
finitely richer than the Grecian's. A philosopher, a man 
of profound learning, as well as a statesman and orator. 
Upon his brain there rested a far greater mass of ideas 
than on the mind of the first orator of the world. He 
could move men, too ; as, for example, when C^sar was 
touched and overcome in the speech for Marcellus. 

Undoubtedly Julius C^sar had more fire ; but Cicero, 
on the whole, must be held the second best orator who 
ever spoke in all this world. 

Webster, I think, he continued, is either very ordinary 
in discourse, or very great. I have heard him, for a fnu 
minutes, when there could be no greater human eloquence. 
But not being a man of much general learning or litera- 
ture, where there is no great thought to be elaborated, or 
lofty sentiment to be pronounced, he halts and drags. 
This is the case even in his very best orations. Out of 
law and statesmanship he is not rich, and we have in him 
no sparkle or gleam of allusion and reference to quicken 
our fancies ; but he flies high, or else he creeps slug- 
gishly along. 

Pinkney's great original endowment was his legal mind. 
He had as fine a legal head as was ever grown in America 
— perhaps some would say the fullest and of the broadest 
dimensions. His rhetoric was all put on. It was got up 
late in life, and was a magnificent and labored costume, 
solely created to display his law. He is always more or 
less stilted and far-fetched ; but he made his bursts tell ; 
they were successful then, whatever we may think in now 
reading them ; and success is the true test of oratoric com- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 257 

position. There were, however, in his works, tioo distinct 
strata; one, his diction — ^his varied, comprehensive, ad- 
mirable and discriminating ivords ; and his figures and 
chaotic confusion of metaphor. The former — liis words — 
he learned by a most persistent study of literature and the 
best speakers of England, and I hold his diction to be in 
the first rank for the purposes of the orator. (He conned 
over dictionaries, too, most arduously.) But the latter — ■ 
his figures — his Minerva brandishing the spear, his JunOj 
etc., etc., I never thought much of. 

Upon the case of the Nereid, though, I think the Su- 
j)reme Court were clearly wrong, and he as clearly right. 

There are at least twenty different hinds of English. 
There is a fine and delicate English for sentiment, and a 
very nice and full and discriminating exact English for 
philological description, like De Quincey's ; and a copious 
and rich and somewhat loose English for the orator. He 
does not often need to mark by a word accurate shades of 
meaning ; he may and does repeat much ; he throws various 
lights upon the point ; and the side he's on, too, often helps 
to show what he means. Fox, and Erskine, and everybody, 
repeat much, restate and vary their expression of proposi- 
tions. 

Erskine knew men very thoroughly, from his service on 
deck and field. Then he had thrown himself upon the best 
English literature, with a hungry and even voracious ap- 
petite ; and from it, especially from his careful and con- 
tinued study of Milton and Shakspeare, he gained his 
chaste, rich and admirable diction. This diction is his 
chief acquisition. And he thus grasped the flower of liter- 
ature, without becoming imbued with the faults and foibles 
of the literary man ; which are a dreamy, sentimental, 
brooding, imagining tendency. These ivords he divided 



258 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

and delivered in sentences fasliioned hy a very musical and 
rlujtlimic ear. He had, too, a natural knack for catching 
at elegant and felicitous modes of expression. 

As he learned not much besides words, and how to 
answer the more pressing necessities of his profession, and 
as he came early into active business, he spent his life in 
thus meeting the demands of the day ; and when his ener- 
gies for that somewhat abated, he had no thought and 
knowledge so fall back uj)on. 

Brougham, I (Choate) think, is more naturally inclined 
to science than politics or law. But he has vast energy 
and untiring activity of mind, and has bent all his powers 
to oratory. Although not a true orator, possessing little 
power of touching the feelings, yet, by the sheer force and 
fertility of his mind, he is the first speaker in England: 

Of another orator he said. He is a mere highly-colored 
popinjay He has a tawdry rhetoric, and can not move 
men with it ; that is men of much thought. He has had 
no active commerce with men, he has not battled and fellow- 
shiped with them in a long active court and jury life. If 
his mind hadn't been shallow, he wouldn't have had his 
head turned by the early adulation of English society. 

Active legal business affords little or no training or 
supply for speaking. It gives one a certain facility of ac- 
tion, but puts no thought or diction or stuff into you, 

Mr. Choate also remarked that Lord Jeffrey, the great 
lawyer and reviewer, got his English from translating and 
from reading. He was however rather the literary than 
tlie public man. Like Macaulay, he had the true literary, 
solitary, and abstracted musing tastes. Moreover, I re- 
member Choate remarked to me. If you want really to 
master what you think you know, tell it to somebody. I 
once knew a man who learned very many complete pages 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 259 

of Addison, and retailed it out in conversation. He was 
thus practicing very muck the same thing as extempore 
delivery in original Avords of other people's thoughts ; a 
practice I much approve of One thereby exercises in the 
mere invention of expression, without being compelled to 
labor for the invention of thought ; for a daily drill prac- 
tice of which, an active life hardly affords time. 

Mr. Choate also observed that he thought De Quincey 
something of a babbler and gossiper, a busy-body, an in- 
termoddler with other people's aflairs. He was, apparently, 
not loved by any of his associates except AVilson, Kit North. 
And I doubt sometimes, said he, if he was a true man, 
though I think him one intellectually, of latent accom- 
l^lishment, giving off some of the most critical and finest 
English extant. 

September 26, 1852.— Mr. Choate gave me an afternoon 
to-day with him in his noble library. 

Among many things, we discussed the rejection of Web- 
ster by the Baltimore Convention. I maintained that a 
great statesman who had for years given himself to his 
party and his country, had a claim on that party for the 
presidency. This he denied. The moment you suggest a 
claim on the party for his services, you suggest a reflection 
on the statesman's patriotism. Webster, moreover, has 
had some rewards as he went along — Washington, with all 
its attractions, and the society of the first men of the land. 

He remarked that he thought Scott's chances of an elec- 
tion were very good. Webster, he says, was so confident 
of receiving the nomination of the Baltimore Convention, 
that he said to Blatchford, one of his friends, "If I am 
nominated, of which now there. seems little doubt, I shall 
make a tour of the West." I (Choate) think Webster 
Avould have been elected, if nominated. I think America 



260 BEMIXISCEXCES OF RUFCS CHOATE. 

is prond to weakness of her men of great mental stature — 
and there would have heen a mighty reaction and upheav- 
ing of the pipular waters. AU the young men of educa- 
tion. aU the ministers would have rallied for him. His 
AUeghonian super-excellence, especially in a contest like 
this, where no great issues are involved, but it is mainly a 
contest of men, must have given him the prize. Yet even 
while he was so confident during the sessions of the nomi- 
nating body, there wasn't the shadow of a chance for his 
nomination. 

I suggested to !Mr. Choate that the country had prided 
itself on Clav's services, and vet had never crowned him ; 
which he acknowledged was an argimient against his 
theory. 

Everett did not rule in Congress not because his speaking 
was not fine, but l]»ecause all his peculiar knowledges and 
excellences were out of place. He had, for instance, studied 
the Greek drama most criticallv for five vears ; but how 
did that help him ? He wasn't great on ready, off"-hand 
speaking. K he had been brought up diffcrrently, taught 
school in vacations, and worked his wav alon«r throu;:rh a 
la\*yer's office, he might have been a different man. Still 
I don't think he can be called an unsuccessful man. 

I (Choate) at one time ran too much to words and 
jthrases : for which alone, by the way, literature is directly 

valuable, except as a recreation. I consider Mr. a 

mere raihr. He fixes his mind whollv on one side, ut- 
terly disregards aU other asjjects, other quahfications or 
extenuations ; spends aU his intellect in the poor exercise 
of making phrases, variously and pungently to express this 
extreme one-sidedness. Hence aU his power. 

Disraeli speaks well in Parliament undoubtedly. 
But he is a literary man sjicaking well ; not a talker hke 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 261 

unto the style in wliicli the great orators of England have 
spoken. 

• It's a great mistake to think anything too profound or 
rich for a popular audience. No train of thought is too 
deep or subtle, or grand — but the manner of presenting it 
to their untutored minds should be peculiar. It should be 
presented in anecdote or sparkling truism, or telling illus- 
tration, or stinging epithet, etc. ; always in some concrete 
form, never in a logical, abstract, syllogistic shape. 

There was one year of my early life in which I (Choate) 
dried my mind all up by an exclusive study of the law. 

Mr. ousrht to do a vast deal more than he does. He 

has no occupying profession, while all we lawyers get 
is a brief and furtive access to our miscellaneous libraries 
morning and evenings. I at present am residing a page ot 
Bacon daily. His tide of thought is a soaring, swelling 
stream. All knowledge is indeed contributory to the ora- 
tor, but some much more so than other kinds. 

Clay was, I think, very different in his oratory from 
Patrick Henr}-. The latter was purely emotionaL He 
never to mv knowledge gave any w ise advice in his life. 
Clay's power really rested on his wisdom, his genuine far- 
sisjhted wisdom. And his oratory teas much trained. 
Yerv considerable emotional impulse, however, was com- 
bined with his intellect. 

Burke in a speech would have employed very much the 
same essential groundwork as Clay, but it would have been 
sustained bv a class of considerations di-avm from a wider 
sweep of philosophy ; it would have been illustrated by liner 
images, and embodied in fiir richer diction. 

Webster's phrases are much more telling than Everett's. 
They run through the land like coin. 

I think there were at least a thousand men in the army 



262 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

of Mexico, who in going there were laying out for the 
presidency. Caleb Gushing won't stay on the Bench six 
months. It's obvious that his thoughts are off in Cuba 
and elseivhere. 

Two weeks after the foregoing converse with Mr. Choate 
I spent another Sunday afternoon with him. He showed 
me a great folio dictionary, newly brought out by some 
one, oi varied phrases for the same idea. 

I think that Scott will be elected, said he. I told him 
I disagi'eed with him, and argued to show it, from the fact 
that we had never carried the three great States, the gain- 
ing of two of which is indispensable to success, when the 
Democrats are united. Now no Barnburning heresy, I 
said in reply, sunders their wigwam. He changed the topic, 
and went on to say. The acceptance of our American Con- 
stitution was almost a miracle. Sam Adams and Patrick 
Henry, honest but most dangerous men, both violently op- 
posed it. They couldn't see the use of it, the necessity for 
it. Finally it was adopted in the Massachusetts Conven- 
tion by a sort of trick. Several clauses were added as 
amendments, which the adversaries of the Constitution 
thought were conditions precedent to its adoption, when 
really they were conditions subsequent, and were never 
broached afterwards. All the sea-board counties of the 
State voted for it, and the Connecticut valley. To-day, 
if the appeal were to be made by the wisdom and intelli- 
gence of Massachusetts to the mass of the people, I don't 
think the Constitution would be adopted. It was a great 
triumph of inire reason. 

Moses earned the Israelites by a direct appeal to their 
senses. I don't doubt that half of them were frightened 
all but to death by the miracles and portents which sanc- 
tioned his divine commission. And these means were con- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 263 

tinued during all the journey. But in this case of our 
Constitution there was no appeal to the senses ; and the 
interests of all the demagogues — of whom Hancock was 
one — were of course against it. 

Any thing may be said to a jury, if you see the Court 
seem approving, and the jurymen listen. An aphorism, a 
citation, an " it was said by that great man," or a histori- 
cal allusion is always appropriate to a jury argument. 
The latter, however, must not be elaborate but rapid and 
sketchy. Erskine got along, not by wide scope and reach 
of rich allusion and thought, but by a beautiful voice, emo- 
tional temperament, and the richest English taken from 
Shakspeare and Milton. 

Pinhieij I think the only very interesting mind that 
has in this country turned itself devotedly to law. 

Judge Story was not naturally a preeminent votary of 
the Muses. 

Webster has never, since he was thirty, given himself to 
a scientific study of the law. He has been occupied in 
politics and general reading a good deal. His mind is far 
richer than Story's — more ideas ; though Story is great. 

Society, unless you talk \dth superior men, is not worth 
much. You must talk small, and you get no important 
knowledo;e or thinkin2;s. 

A legal mind fully content and satisfied with law can 
not be a mind of a very high order ; for the law rests on 
arbitrary collections of decrees. If I could not get any 
time from my law, for liberal and grateful studies, I'd give 
up law from my present case. What wears upon me in 
practice is not study, but fatigue and responsibility of courts. 
My nervous attacks cease when I intermit courts. 

It is not surprising that after several years of study a man 
should be sick a year. Moderation with labor is taught by it. 



2CA REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Goetlie's motto is good : haste not, rest not. Eead 
Pliny, Johnson, and those didactics which teach content. 
Our country is too headlong. 

In studying the Reports, study back from the last case 
reported. Study back the sources of every dictum. Make 
a com2:)lete argument for yourself in the case. 

Byron's thoughts are usable. Shakspcare is full of 
usable maxims for speaking. A real love of Shakspcare 
is rare. Read him critically with Schlegel. Study diction- 
ary of different phrases for the same idea. 

You get copiousness not merely by words, but by full- 
ness of thoughts, knowledges. I recommend to you Ger- 
man — you being at an age when you may have thirty years 
of reading before you. It is a cognate tongue ; and in it 
move the lohole neiv sj^rings of modern thought, archajology, 
ethnology, and all. 

Desultory reading is a waste of life. Read by system. 

Always consider that the law is to be your business. 
Never depend on politics. 

Politics. — It's a curious whimsicality of the people, that 
if a man by fortune and character is finely fitted for pub- 
lic life they won't take him. A man is dependent in poli- 
tics on a perfect rabble, half ethically trained. As soon as 
a man makes politics a, trade he's droj^jped. But if they 
can catch a man at a time when it's devilishly inconvenient 
for him to go, they're sure to send him to Congress. This 
peculiarity must rest of course, like all general feelings, on 
some principle. I query whether it isn't the idea of selfish- 
ness. The peoide think and feel they'll be better served 
by one who has no wish to go. 

Mr. , wlicn in the Senate, forgot the Senate, and 

thought only of the Atlas office. He is shelved I think. 

As soon as a man has been three years in Congress the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 265 

people grow imj^atient of him. There seems to be some- 
thing in the taste of northern society which forbids per- 
manency in jjublic life. The English are diiferent. There 
the borough system in some measure is a corrective. 

In the South a few rule, not the multitude. Hence 
Clay's long-continued success. The South has no literature. 

A man should keep back from politics several years, if 

he would really recommend himself. Suppose Mr. 

gets to Congress. It throws him out of all business, and 
he is not likely to be reelected. Then, where is he ? 

Rantoul had better have devoted himself to his profes- 
sion. Death would then have found him much higher up. 
And, as for his happiness, he had to be sure more congenial 
studies, but then he had eternal disajipointments in his po- 
litical ambition. 

A man is disgusted with law when he is dosed, sur- 
feited. Five hours a day, including practice, is enough for 
law. Save that one ought daily to get at least one hour 
for quiet book-study of law. For five years I studied law 
exclusively, and dried my mind, but, being constantly in 
practice, I learned tolove it. Now, the whole of my pleas- 
urable mental occupations are in very different fields ; there- 
fore I fear law may grow distasteful to me ; and so I'm 
studying it daily scientifically. I'm going to read Coke on 
Littleton to quicken my legal taste ; for it would be dread- 
ful, you know, if the occupation a man was to pursue for 
the last ten years of his life should be repulsive. 

Horace Binney waited ten years for a fee. Kent and 
Mansfield evinced the most liberal culture. 

Practical business in law is the proper preparation for 
the Senate. A great part of the Senators are ex -judges. 
The country demands that men have a business of some 
kind. 

12 



266 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

The above conversation with Choate was in 1852. Scott 
was not elected. 

October 30th, 1852.— Talking with Mr. Choate, to-day, 
he said, A man in sj^eaking ought rather to check the on- 
ward tide of a rapid mind, lest he fall into a mere unim- 
pressive volubility. 

He said he had declined the Boston eulogy on Mr. 
Webster because he had previously accepted an invitation 
similar from Dartmouth CoUes-e. To do that he could 
take his own time, and could indulge in a far more critical, 
scholastic, and to him grateful analysis of the theme, than 
would be fit for Faneuil Hall ; and besides, it would tax 
me terribly, said he, to speak two hours in Faneuil Hall. 

All the successive periods of Webster's life, the edu- 
cational, when his mind formed, the j^rofessional, etc., he 
should examine. One hour he thought he should give to 
the examination of the " conscience" abusers of Webster, 
all of whom admit that if he honestlv thou«;ht his coun- 
try in jeopardy, his course on the 7th of March was justifi- 
able. 

Battling on in this rapid way, he commenced, Poor 
Everett ! — no he is not poor, he is great Everett — I'm 
glad he's gone into the State Department for his own sake, 
and Webster's sake. 

December 20th, 1852. — A verv lon2: and delis-htful con- 
versation with Mr. Choate in his librarv yesterday. 

He spoke of the admirable character of Goodrich's 
Book of English Orators, but thought he didn't quite do 
justice to Grattan, in liis description of the ridiculousness 
of his " first fifteen minutes." 

Grattan had one of the grandest opportunities ever giA^n 
to an orator, in his speech opening thus : '^ At length I ad- 
dress a neio country." Mr. Choate more than once spoke 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 267 

to me of this speech. Such gi-and occasions, he said, are 
vouchsafed to few orators. Webster had not, in all his 
career, any such an one. 

Mirabeau, too, spoke in a new epoch ; and Rousseau, 
in his writings, caught his burning eloquence from this, 
that he was for the first time uttermg the long-crushed 
thoughts and wants of the poor million ! 

A speaker makes his impression, if he ever makes it, in 
the first hour, sometimes in the first fifteen minutes ; for 
if he has a proper and finn grasp of his case, he then puts 
forth the outline of his gi-ounds of argument. He plays 
the overture, which hints at or announces all the airs of 
the coming opera. All the rest is mere filling up ; answer- 
ing objections, giving one juryman little arguments with 
which to answer the objections of liis fellows, etc. Indeed 
this may be taken as a fixed rule, that the popular mind 
can never be vigorously addressed, deeply moved, and 
stirred, and fixed, more than one hour in any single ad- 
dress. 

The jury address of four hours is no exception to this ; 
for they don't, in its whole course, give more than one 
hour's fixed attention. Some parts of that hour's attention 
may be scattered over various portions of the argument, but 
generally most of it is given at first. Then curiosity for 
what you're going to rely on in argument is all aroused, 
and they are eager and attentive. After that they wander ; 
and always, in my long address to juries, some one goes to 

sleep. 

In truth, neither in public speeches nor private is it 
possible for the common mind, or perhajjs any mind, to he 
fixed and stirred more than an hour. 

It is to be said also of the apparent exception of juries 
to this rule, that with them there is a business to be done, 



2G8 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

not mere pleasure ; and a great variety in topics, and in 
commenting on various witnesses, turning to the judge, etc. 

When some one yawned in ray face while I was speak- 
ing I have often wished / luas dead almost. And a thou- 
sand times I have felt, he said, the dra":, and fla<^ and 
doubt of success in the middle of my speeches. It results 
from the first pressure of flitigue upon the speaker, and 
some other nervous causes also. 

The power of sympathy is very strong in every orator. 
Erskine was sometimes said to have been put down by his 
adversary procuring some one to yawn in his face. And 
Pinkney I myself saw, in his last great argument against 
Webster, in the full tide of eloquence, completely disturbed 
by a noise at the door. He stopped and said he couldn't 
go on till that confusion was stopped. I remember it, and 
shall, for a thousand years ; as also the smile which passed 
over Webster's grim, unnervous face. 

I have learned not to mind the many trials of my sym- 
pathy ever occurring in speaking, for it won't do to take 
notice of them. This power of sympathy it is which en- 
ables a person to speak far better to an audience, and very 
differently, too, from what he would do alone, in private. 

In addressing an audience, don't fall into the error 
which has much impaired moving power, of loohing about 
from side to side, in the very 7niddle of your sentences, so 
that, in fact, you address nobody in particular. 

It's well enough and desirable to address different quar- 
ters or sections of the audience. But if you were con- 
versing with a circle of friends, you wouldn't look around 
naturally, save at conclusions of sentences, or at least 
clauses of sentences. 

Elocutionary training I most highly approve of I 
would go to an elocutionist myself, if I could get time. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 269 

Everett is probably an example of all that can be done 
by mere elocutionary culture to delight and affect. If, 
however, he had devoted a part of his efforts to developing 
the emotional part of Ids natu7'e, his comijlete power would 
doubtless have been greater. 

/ have ahvays, even be/ore I first loent to Congress, 
practiced a daily sort of elocutionary culture, combined 
loith a culture of the emotional nature. I have read aloud, 
or rather spoken, every day, a page from Burke, or some 
rich author, laboring for two things : to feel all the emo- 
tions of indignation, sarcasm, commiseration, etc., which 
were felt by him. And also, to make my voice flexibly 
express all the changes of pitch and time, etc., appropriate 
to the fluctuation of the thought. I have done this in my 
room, and did not therefore give Tent to loudness or vio- 
lence, hut found great range of tone possible, nevertheless. 

I strove constantly also to make my tones strong and 
full, and the throat icell opc7ied. 

I found that giving voice to the emotions suggested by 
the successive thoughts, augmented them infinitely more 
than merely silently reading the page could do. 

All the discipline and customs of social life and busi- 
ness life, in our time, tend to crush emotion and feeling. 
Literature alone is brimful of feeling. All good or bad 
poetry, and every thing but mathematics, — even meta- 
physics, — stimulates this emotional seat of life. 

The intense effect I (Choate) have spoken of, which 
the speaking the words of a page in appropriate tones 
produces on me, I am somewhat puzzled to account for. 
It can be referred, I think, to an effect of sympathy, inas- 
much as the tones heard by your own ear, though they 
come from your own mouth, seem as if produced by a third 
person. 



270 EEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

Mr, Webster, I know, must have paid, at some time of 
his life, much attention to delivery. At Phillips' Acad- 
emy, to be sure, he wasn't much of a speaker, but at his 
college he was the best speaker- of his class. He was 
always selected for the Fourth of July orations, etc. 

He himself told me (Choate) the story about his grad- 
uation. He had labored all through college to get one 
particular part at commencement, as he told me he had 
set his heart on it. That part was one always given to 
the best speaker and orator. But, although he was by 
unanimous consent thought certain of it, the part itself 
was in the last term of his course abolished, as he thought 
by the contrivance of one of the college officers who was 
ill disposed toward him. He told me himself that no dis- 
appointment of his whole life ever aifected him more 
keenly. (This he said to me before he lost the Presidency.) 

This circumstance shows how well he must have culti- 
vated oratory ; and I know, and I tell you, that rhetoric — 
at least so mucli of it as appertains to the artificial arrange- 
ment and distribution of proofs — had received much study 
from him. I recollect his speaking to me once about the 
propriety of placing the weaker arguments in the middle 
of the speech. 

When you (#tiat is, the author) have heard Webster, 
you have heard an old man, and not him as he was. His 
second Bunker Hill speech, I agree with you, was a com- 
plete failure and break-down, as regards delivery. I sat 
behind him, and was never so distressed in my life. 

It's very difficult to discuss different kinds of orators 
intelligently, for the divisions are so ill defined, that we 
talk according to our ideal of diiferent kinds, and mean 
diverse things by the same words. Consequently, it is 
often a dispute about mere words. One orator is very 



REMINISCENCES OF RTJFUS CHOATE. 271 

emotional, another intellectually hrilliant, and others com- 
bining these elements in undeiinable proportions. 

Macaulay and Jeffrey are samples of tlie comparatively 
passionless orators. They are men of no strong, ardent 
Ijeliefs — not any very tenacious holdings of faith in any 
thing, I reckon. (Not atheists, however.) They prevail 
by diction and manner. Macaulay I deem the finest talker 
I ever saw or knew of in any country. 

Fox was incomparably superior to Pitt as an orator. I 
never could fully get at the secret of Pitt's power as an 
orator. He wasn't impassioned, though he had a fine voice, 
and his diction was fluent and fine. 

Pickering once told me he heard Pitt rise at 3 a. jl, 
after Windham and Sheridan and others had all spoken ; 
and really, in comparison, his grand volume of sound 
seemed the roar of a lion compared with the chattering of 

magpies. 

No doubt Pinkney admired Pitt, for he had the same 
kind of intellectual oratory. Pitt's great source of power 
in oratory, after all, I'm disposed to think, was character. 
His position was so daring at the head of the British gov- 
ernment, first against the coalition, and then against the 
continent ; and he always showed such unbending nobility 
and dignity of mind. Still, as Burke said, he was " the 
sublime of mediocrity." 

Chatham was not often pathetic, but terible and grand 
and sweeping. 

Wirt, at thirty-five years of age, was, I think, the most 
interesting man of the profession in our country. Webster 
and Pinkney had not then come out in national relief. 
With them letters were an after acquisition, with Wirt 
the literature was originally congenial. I didn't hear him 
in his prime, for the winter I was in his office he was 



272 ItEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

struck down in tlio middle of preparing a great case by a 
sort of paralysis, brought on entirely by over work. 

He told me (Clioate) once that he sat right behind 
Webster in the Dartmouth College case, and he didn't 
hear anything of that pathetic peroration which Goodrich 
describes ; at least he wasn't impressed with anything in 
particular about it. 

I think Wirt's argument in Burr's case, and on the 
motion to exclude all the testimony as to what occuiTcd in 
other parts than the venue, his greatest effort on record. 

Irving, the English divine, had the deep convictions of 
religion as the fountain of his eloquence. 

Chatham's convictions and emotions were bottomed 
on the broad basis of profound convictions of right and 
wrong. 

Pitt had, as any English nobleman's son designed for 
oratoiy has, an admirable training from his cradle. He 
never heard any but the best words and the noblest senti- 
ments, and the most cultivated and often eloquent tones 
from his youth up. 

Everett, I don't think a selfish man. He has always 
been devoted to his family. His wife has been sick, and 
his children been sick ; and for many years so assiduous 
has been his devotion to them that his disturbed nights 
and sleeplessness has broken down his health. He has 
been in that household man and woman too. 

I (Choate) talked w4th Daniel Webster about the mat- 
ter when I was applied to on behalf of Professor Webster. 
He entirely coincided with me as to the proper line of de- 
fense — that it must be an admission of the homicide. 

Mr. Choate intimated that at once, in the very earliest 
stage of the matter— the defendant had just been examined 
in the Police Court — the defendant's counsel should settle 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 273 

on their certain line of defense, and put forth some theory 
wliich should allay the tremendous popular filing rising 
fast against him — a feeling whose outside pressure would 
be irresistible in the Court on the jury at the trial. And 
then he added, if they mean to save him, there's not a 
minute to be lost, 

(Mr. Webster said to me (the author) some time after 
he had this conversation with Mr. Choate, that he had not 
the least doubt of Professor Webster's guilt.) 

Mr. Choate observed, when a speaker gets old, say fifty, 
it may be necessary to stimulate a little to revive his sensi- 
bilities. But youth should never rely on it. However 
tea or hot ivater are natural excitants, and will not injure 
or exhaust even youth. Hot water was Burke's stimulant. 
He had beside him during the writing of his master com- 
positions a pitcher of it, which from time to time he 
quaffed. But if for any very trying occasion a man finds 
it necessary to stimulate, two glasses of hroion sherry is, I 
know by experience, far better than any other wine. 

I don't think, as some say, that our climate is unfavor- 
able to orators. 

1853. 

January 15, 18.53. — G-reat patent case, which had been 
fouo-ht for three weeks, ends in verdict for Choate. 

Mr. Choate told me his adversary managed the case 
very well, for one who didn't understand all the depths and 
shoals of patent law. But my own course has always been, 
said he, when I am for the defendant in a patent case, to 
insist on the non-infringement, and not to rely too much 
on the non-novelty of the plaintiff's invention. 

This latter course the adversary in this case took, i. e., 

impugning plaintiff's patent. 

1 2* 



274 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

He was wrong in this, said Mr. Choate ; for in this 
case the phiintifi''s patent don't teach you how to make the 
defendant's machine. That's the test. 

My adversary's argument was very beautiful and effect- 
ive in rousing some emotions in the breasts of the jury ; 
but these emotions were none of them so immediately con- 
nected with the defendant as to be of much jJiactical ser- 
vice to him. 

April 13. — Mr. Choate began talking about Sir Henry 
Bulwer's remark which he made while ambassador to 
America, that no northern orator could speak grandly 
without stimulants, owintr to the tamer current of their 
blood. Choate said he didn't believe it. The Northerners 
were not wanting in endowments of temperament, but they 
only wanted development. He considered our social cus- 
toms and training at the North crushing to all ardor of 
oratory. The w^orld, said he, is beginning to demand a 
higher training for orators. 

Pinkney, I (Choate) heard make the most delightful 
speech I ever listened to ; but it was an intellectual de- 
light, for Pinkney decidedly lacked sensibility. His elo- 
quence was artificial. 

Mr. Choate said, in another conversation, that now the 
Whigs were so defeated, a great American Union party 
must be formed, including Missouri and the far West, 
whose purpose should be to build up America — at home, 
her home interests, etc., in distinction from foreign aggres- 
sive conquest, 

1854. 

3Iarch 5. — In trying a cause to-day in Court, Mr. 
Choate suddenly turned round to me, and without the 
least preamble, and still paying attention to the cause, 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 275 

said, I've just been reading Vinet's book on Pulpit Elo- 
quence. It's the best thing I've seen. Go and get a cojiy, 
and tell them to charge it to me, and I'll put yours and 
my name in it ; then read it through, for it's capital. 
Having jerked out these words in a violent whisper, he 
whirled round, and was far back in the middle of his case 
again in a moment, nor did he have any more leisure to 
talk on that day. 

March 26. — Talking over a case witli Mr. Choate 
to-day, I remarked to him (what probably most young 
lawyers have found) that the more I got into practice, 
the more I liked law. Like it, said he, of course you like 
it ! There's nothing else for any man of intellect to like. 
Politics is shifting, unsteady and capricious ; and they 
don't satisfy the intellect. 

May 6. — Had conversation with Mr. Choate to-day, on 
law, etc. He said Noon Talfourd's Essay on the Bar, etc., 
was greatly exaggerated in its belittleings and disparage- 
ments of the bar. The answer to what he, Talfourd, says, 
is to be found in the line of superior men in England, the 
line of stocky first-rate Englishmen who have given them- 
selves to the law. 

Mansfield, for instance, was as cultivated and refined 
and lettered as Ned Everett. 

The Bar can be looked at as little ; as having, as Cicero 
said, all its controversies about " three kids ;" but, on the 
other hand, it is capable of being regarded with enthusiasm 
and devotion. 

Wirt had too much letters, too much general culture ; 
and he saw too clearly the unfavorable and little aspect of 
the law ; while Pinkney, not thus liberalized, thought there 
was nothing this side heaven like forensic triumph. There 
is, though, a sight of truth in what Talfourd says, but if 



276 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

yoii languish in the pursuit of law, read Quintilian and 
Cicero and enthusiastic legal writers. 

At any rate you must have a profession, and if you are 
not first-rate in that, you will be nothing, and can not have 
your oion self-respect. 

What is always delightful and noticeable in Erskine is, 
that besides his fine diction and eloquence, a genuine entliu- 
siasm for his j)rofession ever breaks out, in constantly re- 
curring sentences in his speeches, such as, " This shrine of 
Justice," " This revered magistrate," etc. 

An article on Pinkney should show the distinction be- 
tween rhetoric and oratory ; between him who goes into 
the Senate for an occasional speech, crammed and gorgeous, 
and him who makes every-day business speeches, able and 
eloquent, like Clay and Webster. 

The idea that there is a want of sympathy in the mass 
of the people with an educated man's mind is much exag- 
gerated in general belief Any fine thought or rich expres- 
sion is apprehended by the common mind, somehow — vaguely 
at first, but so almost any thought is at first vaguely and 
uncertainly apprehended, by any but a trained mind, 

June 27. — Mr. Choate called at my office to-day, to see 
its location. I had recently moved into it. After praising 
its facilities of location and light, he began to talk about 
politics. It was in the middle of the presidential term of 
Mr. Franklin Pierce. He said he thought the strain on 
the Union was now far fiercer and more dangerous than in 
1850, or ever before. 

He spoke of the Native American party. They have 
an immense fulcrum of power. Every laboring man of 
America who sees a foreigner ill-clad and conditioned, 
standing in the fields of labor, and underselhng him in his 
labor, will have a native American ticket in his pocket. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE 



277 



That party has perennial springs of power. As a matter 
of policy, said he., I should advise you to join these Know 

Nothing's. 

June 2S—B.-Aymg occasion to stop at Mr. Choate's 

house to-day, he came himself to the door. Said he, I'm 

all alone here ; come in and dine ; I've got some brandy I 

can give you, which was sent to me. It is smooth as oil, 

hut sharp as a sword. 

We sat down and he hegan as usual, at once, to talk. 

Of dinner speeches he said— there was danger of hemg 
too elaborate in them; but that while there could be no 
fixed rule for them, they should be such as would make all 
say " That speaker is a smart fellow." They offer oppor- 
tunity for much allusion and ornamentation, and fOTmuch 
preparation to be worked in, but all to be thrown off easdy 

and neglige-like. i i ^.o,. 

Tacitus, he said, he translated cZat7^-but he had lately 
taken up an author as new to him as the Chinese wall- 
namely Pindar-full of gorgeousness and sententious- 



ness 



Now said he, I never work later than nme ni the cvcn- 
inc without being sick next day; but I always rise early ni 
thl morning to labor. But in College I never went to bed 
before one o'clock, and rose very early to Prayers, without 

then feeling it. 

When we parted he said. You must come and din3 
with me alone here some day; and I'll let you know two 
days beforehand, for I want then a dinner as is a dinner. 

Juh, Wi-ln accordance with the intimation thus 
.iven a few days after, Mr. Choate sent for me; andhavmg 
ordered a very nice dinner, I anticipated that he wou d en- 
ioy himself in partaking of his own good cheer with me. 
But when the day came, he was in the middle of a case, 



278 REBIINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE 

which however went over to the next day ; but he was too 
unwell to drink anything hut a little brandy — mcdicinaUy , 
as he smilingly said, although his table sparkled with wines 
which an epicure might envy. His mind, however, needed 
no stimulus; and among many other things, he said — ot 
Cicero : Cicero's course is thought by the German school 
to show him to be a trimmer in politics — but we must 
remember that the age was a very warlike one, and the Ee- 
public was in its last stage of degeneracy. And he being a 
pure literary man was as much out of his element as would 
now be Judge Story or Edward Everett, if the State were 
controlled by warriors. Cicero knew what he wanted well 
enough, but how to get it in the circumstances which sur- 
rounded him demanded some trimming. But on the whole, 
his course is entirely defensible, if we take into view all the 
surroundings. 

The attitude of the New England clergy on the slavery 
question I disapprove of. They seem to be carried away 
with a view of duty as seen from one single relation only. 
A comparison of duties or a yielding of an impracticable 
good, for the far grander good of a nationality pregnant 
with happiness to generations — they seem unable to ap- 
prehend. The slave who was not reduccid into servitude 
by us, can advance no claim of right to our aid. It is no 
business of ours. Then, as a mere question of rival phi- 
lanthropies to him or to the nation, a treatise might be 
written, which should be built upon all the great ethical 
writers of ancient and modern times, and which should be at 
once comprehensive and rigorously logical, and which would 
settle the question. Such a treatise I at this moment know 
but one man who could write; that is Dr. Walker, of Cam- 
bridge. 

Charles Sumner's position as to swearing to support 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 279 

the Constitution as he understands it, I tliink entirely 
untenable. It is the lowest degree of Jacksonism. 

Mr. Webster always used to say, pale sherry is good for 
nothing ; " he hasn't anything to him." 

After talking about an hour, he said he had business in 
his office, to which he must go, but, said he, I will leave 
you in possession of the table, the liquor and the library, 
and you can have full swing there. And so saying, he 

went out. 

I mention such little unimportant traits and observa- 
tions as these, of his, because they show how simple and 
playful and natural this great man was, in his familiar and 
unrestrained intercourse. 

In another conversation about this time, I mentioned 
to Mr. Choate that I had heard from a friend of Mr. Web- 
ster's that he said he wished he had never been born, and 
added that the sentiments of Frederic of Prussia, as con- 
tained in one of his letters, suited him (Webster) exactly, 
and coincided with his own views. 

Mr. Choate said that this must have been a momentary 
fit of gloom, occasioned by disaster ; for Webster was 
rather a constitutionally happy man. Undoubtedly he 
had been greatly exercised in mind upon religious themes 
— upon our present and future relations with God — upon 
the great mystery of life. But as he grew older in life he 
grew more attached to it. This is the natural operation, 
said Choate, of time. A man is not happy in the world 
till he has secured a position in it. Till then he is o, fresh- 
man on the earth. Every year after that generally gives 
him new associations and satisfactions with the world. 
An old man never commits suicide— it's your young man 
who squanders happiness. 

November 18;/;.— Mr. Choate said to me in court, 



280 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

(lay, I'm going to try to get you an invitation to speak 

at • college ; and, if I accomplish it, you may take 

the roofs off of six houses. 

December 4th. — Mr. Choate gave me an instance, to- 
day, of his minute attention to trifles, in the midst of the 
most vast and engrossing concerns of business. He came 
looming into my office simply to explain and regret that a 
certain invitation had not reached me, which he knew had 
been sent. Thus attentive he always was to the least 
minutij^, of the wants and feelings of friendship. I never 
asked him to write letters of introduction, or to do the 
friendly office of saying something to individuals which 
would promote desired objects, that he was not sure to 
have the letters all written at the time named, and the 
words all said to the persons indicated. 

He never forgot anything in his heart or in his head, 

1855. 

3Ia7/. — Mr. Choate, while still suffering from the effects 
of an operation on his knee, asked me to drive out witli 
him in a close carriage. The period of his gradual conva- 
lescence from this sickness was almost the only time I ever 
saw him in a close carriage. He never rode or drove, i 
never knew him, in all my acquaintance with him, to take 
the reins in his hand on any occasion. Nor did he ever 
ride on horseback. 

On this occasion, we drove round through Cambridge 
and by the colleges, and through other roads of the lovely 
environs of Boston. With his limb bolstered up across 
the carriage, he lay back and talked. He hardly noticed 
the scenery, but ruminated, soliloquized and conversed. 
Many things he observed which it would be hardly quite 
dfchcate to bring to the public eye. 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 281 

Kansas was now a fruitful subject of apprehension in 
the republic. Mr. Choate said, In Kansas, blood will be 
shed yet ; but that is not the great danger. The danger 
in our Union is, that a State, qua (as) a State, in its sov- 
ereign capacity, shall declare war and take the field. When- 
ever a State, qua (as) a State, shall come out against the 
national government, we can't do anything ; for that 
which ordinarily would be treason, is, as it were, saved 
from being so by the flag of the State ; certainly, at least, 
so far as to save the point of honor. 

Herein lurks the great danger of our system of govern- 
ment. 

While I have been sick, I have been reading ^schi- 
nes' Oration on the Crown, in order more fully to master 
Demosthenes by first mastering the attack which he re- 
pelled. 

Every day but two during my whole sickness I've read 
and studied. My mental powers have been through it all 
perfectly strong. In the morning I have had, during all 
my confinement, in bed or up, a regular course of reading. 
In the afternoon I read miscellaneously till the evening 
paper comes. And I get along very well, though I find 
myself sometimes anxious for the newspaper to arrive ; 
and you know, he added, laughingly, a man must be in a 
bad way when he finds himself impatient for the evening 
paper. 

To appreciate the resoluteness of this intellectual ac- 
tivity, the reader must remember that this sickness had 
been so violent that Mr. Choate was compelled to take 
ether for a severe operation upon his knee; yet every day 
but two he had studied. He told me that when he took 
the ether it was all very pleasant till the moment came of 
surrenderino; consciousness — then it was like death. 



282 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

He went on in this same conversation to observe, that 
without a methodical course of reading, any one who has 
much leisure and freedom gets ennuyed. 

It's a great advantage for man, said he, that separate 
governments are instituted, where political offenders may 
find refuge from each other. In the Eoman empire period, 
the fugitive from the Ca3sars could not rest anywhere from 
the sleepless eye and the avenging sword. 

Cicero might well put out his head from his litter to 
meet death ; for, to no shore, in safety or in honor, could 
he fly who had filled the consulship of Eome. 

Eeturning to American politics, Mr. Choate said, the 
Know Nothings will elect the next President, if they carry 
Virginia, as I think they will. Fillmore or Seward, prob- 
ably the former, will be the man. [They didn't caiTy Vir- 
ginia.] 

July 30. — In conversation to-day, Mr. Choate said he 
thought George Hillard's argument at Dedliam on the 
slave case suit against the City was about as eloquent and 
fine a performance as he ever heard in court. 

He said that during his long sickness Edward Everett 
came two or three times a week to see him, and read to 
him his journal and other things. Said Choate, I love 
Everett more now and understand him better than I ever 
did before in all my life. 

He spoke of politics. Said he, I think the state of 
politics here is now so hopelessly discouraging that a man 
may be pardoned for entirely abandoning it for the present, 
and giving neither aid, advice or anything else to his coun- 
try. Though, generally, I consider it wrong to desert the 
interests of your country, merely because you don't like its 
management. 

September 26. — A merican Politics. — No one, Mr. Choate 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 283 

said, could do anything in politics of consequence, except 
by making it a deliberate experiment, business, and occupa- 
tion. If a man does that, he runs all the risks of being 
thrown over any moment by a fickle and demagogue-blind- 
ed p(5ople. You have to mix for ever Avith people whom 
you can't shake off; while, also, you have to labor with 
nmch more serious and brain-taxing themes (if you aspire 
to the. rank of statesman, not a mere politician) in Con- 
gress than at the Bar. At the latter, a man has his side 
given to him ; then he labors to sustain it. In politics 
you have to cast and forecast from a wider and much more 
difficult range of considerations, what side the party shall 
take; as well as then, afterwards, go through the toil of sup- 
porting it ; and, of course, no man of decided abilities 
Avants to go into politics, except in anticipation of march- 
ing on through high steps to great posts. 

Lastly, if a man goes much into politics with Law, he 
will have no leisure for much cultivation and gratification 
of tastes — for literature, nature, etc., and all the finer sensi- 
bilities. 

It is well enough, at some portion of life, for an Ameri- 
can to go into Congress for a brief time, if opportunity offers, 
as a sort of recreation and for pleasurable observation ; but 
the great aim of a young man should be legal advocacy. 

If I myself could be permanently and happily in the 
Senate, he went on to say, I should like that better than 
anything in the world ; but to be just enough in the Sen- 
ate to be out of the law, and not enough in the Senate to 
be a leader in politics, is a sort of half-and-half business 
very contemptible. 

Then, too, if one did go much into politics, the having 
a profession of law to retire to, would always afford a grace- 
ful pretext of retiring in dark days. Mr. , now says 



284 KEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

he retires to take care of his private affairs. Whether he 
does or no, nobody believes him, but all suppose him sulk- 
ing at home. 

Now, from all my experience, I am satisfied, said he, that 
in the long run a lawyer in Suffolk county can have, if he 
bo bright and quick, three or four hours a day, on an aver- 
age, for his literary and leisure occupations. 

Moreover a New Englander, unless he be a Democrat, 
must be generally shut out from national honors. 

William Wirt's reasons for avoiding politics, I think, 
said he, rather exquisite; especially considering he came 
from Virginia where politics are so universally indulged 
in, and literature has so little place. 

Opium, said he, I do not think Macaulay takes to any 
extent ; but I wonder how long it would take to affect the 
constitution with it. I never took any in my life, except 
as laudanum for tooth ache, and that made me stupid. 

Macaulay I think very tiresome to read long. He is a 
fine specimen of delicious vices of composition — more sin- 
gular than Seneca. He has, however, an abundance of 
rich and rare thoughts ; but the chief fault is his unvary- 
ing positiveness and certainty on all themes and topics. 

Julius Cajsar I hold a much higher and more interest- 
ing character than Napoleon. The latter was always a 
parvenu after all, always vulgar, and in some things little. 

He pointed to a bronze bust on the mantel-i)iece. This 
bust of Demosthenes, said he, gives no intellectual or ex- 
quisite developments. It looks like a coarse nature, and, 
as far as regarded his animal parts, Demosthenes was so ; 
but the force of his genius, and the fire of his mind and 
character, broke through and conquered all. 

Opposite to it was a bust of Cicero. This head of 
Cicero, said he, is perfect. He was a true literary man, 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 285 

but early leant toward oratory. He had the large mouth 
which eloquence almost always gives its possessor. Mr. 
Webster had a large mouth. 

Everett, I think, will be the next Whig candidate for 
the presidency, unless Seward is. I think him the most 
truly sympathetic with the mass, the most progressive and 
democratic of all his Beacon street set. 

H. G. Otis, I think, was, perhaps, a bigger man than 
Everett. Everett is too great for the snobbish pride of 
ancestry in America ; he is above it. Neither Otis nor 
Everett take audiences olf their feet ; but Everett some- 
times overwhelms them by a beautiful picture. 

Fisher Ames, Patrick Henry, and Whitefield, were, I 
think, the greatest orators out of the pulpit who have 
flourished in our country. Ames was most highly emo- 
tional, pure, and good. He was preeminently fond of the 
Bible ; especially Deuteronomy was always a marvel to him. 

Caleb Gushing and Rantoul are both rather Conti- 
nental than English minds. Cushing's power is a cease- 
less, strong, mental capacity. It makes no difference to 
him what he's at, so long as it commands the attention of 
man. He'd as lief be one of us, playing pettifogger, as 
statesman. He showed very great power as judge of our 
Supreme Court. Had he stayed there, he would have been 
the first Nisi Prius judge in the Commonwealth. 

Rantoul w^as a splendid idealist. I don't know that he 
had more heart than Cushing, but he had enthusiasm for 
his idealities. In the long run he might have come out 
ahead of Cushing. 

Speaking of a ticket for State officers which he very 
much disliked, in a State near by Massachusetts, he said, 
I fear the people of that State will wake up some morning 
and find themselves under a dynasty of hiacl'guards I 



286 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

I consider, he remarked, that Sir William Hamilton has 
the best command of English of any man now living ; Let- 
ter even than De Quincey. 

Mr. , said he, is a good fellow, but I'm inclined to 

think he has nothing in him. He's a Fisher Ames without 
his genius. 

November 11. — I was gratified yesterday by a long- 
promised visit from Mr. Clioate. He came out of town to 
my house, stayed some time, pulled over the books, and 
talked freely. The Know Nothing party, he said, is the 
one for every young man to join who has any hopes. I, 
said he, have never said anything against the Know 
Nothings. And at this moment all the leading Whigs of 
the country are either of them or tending to them — Clay- 
ton, Bell, McLean, and others. Now that the Free Soil 
leaders are discarded, the Whigs have really no leading dif- 
ference with them. The "American" sentiment and Slav- 
ery are really the only questions absorbing to the people, 
unless a war arises. The American sentiment must be 
powerful, practically, for it takes hold of the grosser and 
most vulgar sensibilities and ideas. Everybody feels big- 
ger, as an American, for seeing a raw foreigner beside him. 
It comes right home to 'em. If they manage right they'll 
make the next President — Bell, or McLean, or Fillmore. 

Men have their periods. 

Otis Lord I think one of the very ablest men in this 
State. 

We can't tell whether Sumner is to be chosen again to 
the Senate from this State, till the close of the session of 
Congress this winter, for there'll be a tremendous Kansas 
debate there. 

S. S. Prentiss was damaged in the gulf of gaming. 
Wellington, after Waterloo, was seriously involved by it. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 287 

Love of excitement is what drives men to it. Wellington, 
after being in battle thirty years, couldn't settle down to 
common life. But afterwards he got interested in public 
affairs, and that occupied him. 

France is the first power in the world, now. But I 
don't see any evidence of great mind or power in Marshal 
Pelissier, although the taking of Sebastopol was a marvel- 
ous feat of arms. But it was the French army which did 
it. I shouldn't be surprised if they made peace this win- 
ter, in Europe. 

Cicero. — There's an article in the Westminster on him. 
But there's room yet for a great article which shall do jus- 
tice to him. The Germans have done nothing but attack 
him. But it isn't enough considered in what a position 
he was. He was a civilian, and we, looking back and see- 
ing now what the men of arms were going to do with the 
State, judge him as if he knew. (Choate was always 
stirred up when Cicero was disparaged.) I showed him 
some horses and large stalls, but he admitted that he took 
no interest in horses, nothing like what he did in a book. 
I never could get up any interest in them particularly, 
said he. 

Macaulay (he went on) won attention for his Parlia- 
mentary efforts by his previously-acquired literary repute. 
His fame, though, is all that of literary speech-making. 
For all his writing is in the forensic style. 

1856. 

March "15. — Had a talk with Choate this afternoon. 
He observed, Macauiay's 3d and 4th volumes are powerful ; 
but all his History is a departure from the established rules 
of that sort of composition. He is far too emphatic and 
certain in his facts and conclusions for history. He goes 



288 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

at the reign of William with a power and a pomp worthy 
of the History of the Koman Empire, I like Gibbon bet- 
ter ; there is more of an air of learning (in its technical 
sense) about him ; not pamphlet and detail learning, such 
as Macaulay bristles with. Indeed, I like Fresco tt's his- 
torical style better. 

Bolingbroke I had always a profound admiration for 
intellectually. He stands, as a speaker, among the very 
foremost of those who have ever spoken in England. He 
was, I think, a cross between Chatham and the younger 
Pitt ; he spoke better than the latter, but had not the tre- 
mendous outbursts of power of the former. But his diction, 
his command of trains of thought and acumen philosojAi- 
cally, gave him for general debate great advantages. 

The best article on Cicero is one by Frere, in one of the 
Keviews. He admits that Demosthenes would be consid- 
ered at the head of men for orators ; but then goes on to 
say Cicero is to be considered also as a ivriter. 

The best thing on Demosthenes, I think, is Legare's 
article in the Neiu York Beview, not for critical analysis 
of style so nmch as for all the influential part of Demos- 
thenes — that which will operate on succeeding generations 
in their education and standard for oratory. 

There's a capital thing on Bolingbroke in the West- 
minster Bevieio, by Edward Bulwer, 

Speaking of the Frcsident's proclamation in regard to 
Kansas, Mr. Choate said he must put down border incur- 
sion, or the government would be defiled. Then he paused 
a moment, and said he, What is that fine passage in 
Gibbon, where, speaking of the reign of Justinian, he says 
the world is defiled, or some such word, by a plague, oi 
anything which diminishes greatly the human species ? 
I suggested desolated ; but he thought that was not it. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 289 

In this is observable bis careful notice and recollection 
of exact expressions and phrases. Probably it was years 
since he had read Gibbon, yet here he was minutely recall- 
ing not only his larger facts, but his minute diction. 

He said of his Lecture on the Poet Rogers, announced 
for Monday, the 17th, that he had prepared it quite care- 
fuUy, and, tlterefore, it ivoidd not prohahly he a popular 
discourse. He was going to discuss poetry somewhat, and 
upon the whole, it was written more for his own gi-atifica- 
tion of congenial and pleasant trains of thought than for 
the public taste. It would please only a cultivated audi- 
ence. The characteristics of the age he should describe 
only so far as to picture its thunder and lightning, with 
whose electricity the jooets of the day in common with 
others became charged. In no other way could he describe 
the age without breaking the unity of the discourse. 

He should speak only of what might have been remem- 
bered by Rogers ; he is a clasp of twenty-five great years. 
I couldn't do otherwise, however, he said, than to make a 
splurge at the close about Hiawatha ; and I am going to 
yield so far to Americanism as to pay a tribute, in wind- 
ing up, to three American poets who are my own favorites, 
Dana^ Bryant and Longfellow. Hiawatha, he said, was 
more striking and indicative of the poetical fancy than he 
had originally supposed ; for its repulsive measure repelled 
him at first, as it must always prevent its permanent pop- 
ularity. But Longfellow was a better poet at this moment 
than Tennyson. 

Fillmore, he thought, had no chance for the Presidency. 
The Native American organization, as an organization, if 
they took him up, would give him a chance ; but they 
seemed rather to repudiate the nomination. But probably 
the Democrats will elect their man. 

13 



290 It E M I N I S C E X C E S OF E U F U S C H O A T E . 

Pinknev must naturally have spoken eloquently ; for 
he had a great repute as a young man in Maryland before 
he got his loords. Webster followed him in his last arau- 
ment and sounded bald ; but he had a grand dignity in 
opening, which did more than to compensate for any de- 
ficiency in gay words. 

To my remark, that Pinkney liked Pitt's cold sonorous- 
ness, Mr. Choate said; Pitt had no cold sonorousness, but a 
majestic dignity of warmth. 

Cicero I (Choate) never have read without being en- 
couraged and strengthened ; his views of life are always 
healthy and cheerful and sound. I was not aware of the 
fastness of his vanity, however, till I read him during my 
sickness very much. In one of his letters to Atticus, he 
says, " I spoke with a divine power to the Senate. There 
never was anything like it." 

I don't think, Mr. (a speaker) was on high key 

too much. I lost some of his lowest words, but that's in- 
evitable, if you use the downward slide; and the upward is 
French, and bad. 

March 25.— Mr. Choate's practical interest in his clas- 
sics appeared to-day in a little incident in court. He w^as 
in a marine insurance case. The opposite counsel pro- 
nounced the name of the ship, " Neptunus," accenting the 
letter u in the penult as if long. Choate got right up, and 
wandered back to the rear row of seats, and asked me if I 
didn't think that syllable was short, and the lawyer was 
wong. I replied, I thought it was long. Then, said he, 
rubbing his head and thinking a moment, I'm against 
you; it's short. Having thus aired his classics briefly, 
he rolled back again into his place, and was lost in his 
law. 

May 11, '5Q. — In a conversation with Mr. Choate to- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 291 

day, he said, there were preeminently three great masters 
of style in the world's history. Plato, who added little to 
the world's thought, hut whose style of thought and dic- 
tion stimulated ten thousand minds ; Bacon, and Burke. 
To these also may be added Virgil, as a splendid master of 
words. 

Prescott's histoiy gains on me, he said. I find him dull 
at first. Bancroft, notwithstanding his myiiad faults of 
style, is making, on the whole, a pretty strong impression 
by his work as a histoiy of American civilization. 

He said he could only compose by shutting himself up 
to it. He could do nothing in the way of written compo- 
sition if interrupted. In composing, he was led off, he 
said, into such a range of verification of fact or suggestion 
of thoughts that, for instance, in his " Rogers" lecture, 
there was hardly a sentence, I vow, said he, that I wrote, 
without glancing into more or less of at least fifty books. 

June 19. — Colonel Fremont was nominated this month 
for the presidency. It led to a long and interesting argu- 
ment between Mr. Choate and the author. The great por- 
tion of his observations it would not be quite proper to 
publish, although his opposition to the Republican nom- 
inee was unequivocally pronounced from the first. He ob- 
served. Evciy duty and taste is against this party of the 
sections. They will conduct a canvass every speech of 
which will be charged with hatred to one portion of the 
country. I never will march in their party. I don't alto- 
gether like the Democratic party ; and, at present, I i^ro- 
pose to keep still. 

I have never yet, however, seen the good argument that 
slavery wasn't better for the blacks than freedom, as re- 
gards merely their sensations — the gratification of their 
merely sensual wants. But slavery makes their whole 



292 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

moral and intellectual character a lureck ; and if they are 
women, they are damned. 

Brooks' act of scoundrelism in beating Charles Sumner 
was his own act, not the act of the South. It is small to 
make it a southern act. 

A man of large, calm pride, will be above noticing the 
j)etty arrogance of the South ; just as Macaulay never for 
a moment condescends to notice the constant assumption 
of superiority which every Englishman feels for a Scotch- 
man — and he is full of Scotch blood. 

July 8. — Mr. Choate, a month after the foregoing con- 
versation, told me he had made up his mind to vote for 
Buchanan, the democratic nominee for President of the 
Union. He said he felt it clearly to be his duty ; for 
the Fremont party was a sectional, anti-Union party, and 
nothing should be undone to defeat it. But whether he 
should say anything in the way of a speech, in the cam- 
jjaign, he did not know. But, said he, silence in such 
a sad state of things as environs us now, is profoundly 
ignominious. 

In another conversation, he said, Fisher Ames was 
something like Everett. One of the most impressive 
things Ames ever said was when a murder or some shock- 
ing crime Avas committed in Dedham ; and the citizens 
turned out in mass to hunt the culprit, who had fled to 
the woods. Ames made them a speech, concluding, " Let 
no man sleep in Dedham this night.'' This sentence, they 
say, sounded like an awful adjuration. 

I (Choate) saw Pinkney in his last argument, so furious 
that he turned right round, his hands both high in the air, 
and screaming at the very top of his voice. Pinkney was 
far more furious and savage than Everett, therefore more 
impressive. But then Pinkney had been always conversant 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 293 

with affairs of real business ; whereas the course of Ev- 
erett's life has taken him more amid idealities. 

Cicero was very vehement, hut he spoke aptt. The 
Italians, in the Koman and the modern day both, are, after 
all, more excitable than the Greek. The stamping of foot, 
the frenzy of eye more common with them. Cicero the 
Italian, breaks out, you see, in his speeches, in every form 
of adjuration and invocation. 

To wade through two or three volumes of Macaulay is 
perfect 7302mc?m(/ of intense rhetoric. It is more tedious 
than Guicciardini ; he is an essayist, not a historian. 

December 27, '5Q. — Clioate sent for me to-day, to ask 
if I had ever written on a subject which he was contem- 
plating for a lecture : " The influence of revolutions on 
civil eloquence" was the theme he proposed; and, said he, 
I mean to take the ground that a revolutionary age of a 
nation is the time for the highest eloquence to appear; 
and, with one or two exceptions, history proves it. 

Clay and Webster missed of appropriate topics for the 
greatest agony of eloquence. They came to conduct and 
celebrate a nation already born; but Grattan, who worked 
out the parliamentary revolution for Ireland is the greatest 
of her orators. His two best speeches are the one in 1780; 
and that where he begins " I address a neiu nation." 

Grattan was a most remarkable man. All his life from 
boyhood he was haunted with the passion to be an orator. 
From the time he heard Chatham this was the main sub- 
ject of his thoughts. He appears to have had a gloomy, 
saturnine disposition — rather an unheliever, like all those 
men, Pitt and Fox ; that is, they didn't particularly be- 
lieve any thing ; for they didn't think much about religious 
matters. 

Cicero had no topics either — no agony of his country. 



294 KEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

Kome could he in no danger from a foreign- foe. He is a 
rhetorician — a brilliant mind comino; forward and findino: 
oratory a great arm of display, and studying it; and almost 
all the Ciceronian eloquence, therefore, is epideictic and 
panegyrical. 

Demosthenes^ on the contrary, had the rescue and sal- 
vation of Greece on his tongue. 

So with Miraheau, and the French orators. France 
had universal Christendom against her. 

Kossuth had the revolution and hope of Plungary as 
his theme — ^a flash in the pan to be sure, but a great theme. 

These thoughts, Choate said, he'd only thought of over- 
night, and they were crude, but he meant to work them out. 

Chatham, he said, was an exception to the rule and 
principle he contended for, 

1857. 

January 15th, 1857. — Mr. Choate and Mr. George Hil- 
lard came out and dined with me a day or two ago ; and 
the conversation was very interesting. I see that Mr. Web- 
ster, in his letters, regrets not having preserved memorials 
of the conversations of eminent men v.-ith whom he was 
thrown, and it is a just regret. 

The eloquence of America, said Choate, now corresponds 
with the Livian age of Kome's eloquence ; when the Con- 
suls were coming home annually with new triumphs, when 
everybody was glad and hopeful. It is the ascending age 
of America. 

But Cicero's age was the descending age of Kome. 
And there's a vein of sadness runs throuirh it all. 

One of the great characteristics of Webster's eloquence 
is, that he glows and burns and rises with the tides of hope- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 295 

ful passion of a great young nation. Moreover, he couldn't 
have got oif the great Hayne speech in England. It's too 
eloquent, and brings in too many outside topics for their 
customs. They stand right up in Parliament, v\dth their 
hands in their pockets, and Itum and lea. 

Hillard observed that Brougham as Chancellor, it was 
said, dashed off his judgments hit or miss. Well, said 
Choate, «?i?/ decision was better than none; and at any rate, 
Wellington thanked him for it. 

He spoke of a young Boston lawyer of great promise. 
He said, he is in danger of narrowing his mind. H' he'd go 
into politics more his judgment would be liberalized. He 
goes on to Washington with me sometimes, and I observe 
that he's uncharitable and severe as to those he don't agree 
with. If he'd widen his observation he'd be more charita- 
ble and favorable in his opinions. I think that commerce 
with the political life of our country gives on the whole a 
better view of men, as to their abilities, etc. 

He remarked that he heard Clay appeal to W^ebster 
personally to leave Tyler's cabinet. It was in the Vice 
President's room at the White House. It was only two 
or three minutes, but it was a grand appeal — very power- 
ful. Webster never answered a word. He took it all 
kindly. He felt he was in somewhat of a flxlse position. 
As Clay went out, though, he looked to me and winked. 

Plillard remarked, that when Charles Sumner wrote to 
Webster, recommending him to take the lead of the 
northern feeling, he received it and considered it in the 
same kind, and not fractious or irritated way. 

We talked of Cicero. I said that I had heard the 
opinion expressed that Cicero was not so popular with the 
crowd — the mass, as other speakers; and I thought su- 
preme excellence never was popular. 



29G KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Choate said, at any rate Cicero ivas popular — very ; 
and popular witli the mass of the people. 

Mr. Hillard said he thought Demosthenes was some- 
what of a humbug. No such thing, said Choate. Why, 
said Mr. Hillard, the speech for the Crown isn't the great- 
est thing on earth ; Webster's Hayne Speech was as great. 
No, said Choate, the Gothic language could not make such 
a speech as the Oration for the Crown. It hasn't got ivords 
to make it out of, in the first place ; and then consider, 
also, that it was a defense of the policy Demosthenes had 
pursued for thirty years. 

But how little we know or find of the remains of De- 
mosthenes. Cicero can only say of him — " dicitur audi- 
visse Platoiiem ;" but of Cicero a hundred books remain. 
I advise you to read his letters. 

Mr. Choate then broke out in a denunciation of the 
modern Germans, etc., who denounce Cicero as a " trim- 
mer." The truth was, that in his day arms and civility 
alternated in command ; and as they did so, he turned 
first to one, and then to the other, as the source of the 
power which he wished to invoke. But, said Choate, 
these hook men, Avho know nothing about affairs, about 
actually governing men, and how difficult it is to steer, — 
for them to sit in their studies, and judge Cicero and 
Webster ! It's absurd. 

After all, the only man among the living whom I 
(Choate) care to bring over to appreciate Cicero is Macau- 
lay. 

But, said Mr. Hillard, Macaulay never had any influ- 
ence or real participation in practical affairs in govern- 
ment in England. He was laughed at by the men of busi- 
ness in government. Yes, said Choate, he's the literary 
ma?i— literary temperament aU over. Cicero had the lite- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 297 

rary and practical temperament, and power too, Lut the 
former predominated. 

I want yet, said Choate, with enthusiasm, to write on 
Cicero, and do him justice ; and I would lecture on him, 
but I should inevitably be too polemical. 

I get up at six (December) and make myself a cup of 
tea, which sustains me till breakfast — an hour of work. I 
go to bed at ten o'clock. Everybody ought to, who ivorks. 
Tea is the best stimulant. But black tea is not so stimu- 
lating as green, not more so than hot water ; hot water 
alone is reasonably stimulating. Burke stimuhited on it. 
Yes, said Mr. Hillard, and in Athens there were places in 
the streets where hot water was sold. 

I have not regarded Benton, said Choate, (Benton was 
now lecturing here,) as a man of wisdom. 

S. S. Prentiss, both Mr. Choate and Mr. Hillard con- 
curred in savino', was a marvelous orator ; but Choate 
thought that strength of understanding was among his very 
highest powers. 

Choate said : Caleb Cushing's knowledge and power of 
labor was wonderful. He is like Brougham, but a better 
writer, though not so good a speaker. 

1857. 

January 20. — Mr. Choate to-day argued a heavy in- 
surance case against Mr. George Hillard with great vehe- 
mence, energy, and felicity ; and it shows the rapid and 
wide play of his mind that he had hardly finished his per- 
oration, when he tm'ued round to me, and began to talk 
about a literary theme which he and I discussed the last 
time we met. Said he, I was wrong in deeming Cicero an 
orator who would not support my theory that the great- 
est eloquence is only born in revolutions. I have looked 

13* 



298 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

that wliole subject over again since, and I think him emi- 
nently an example in point ; and so I mean to say in my 
lecture this wiuter. 

February 3d — Mr. Choate remarked, in talking with 
me about editing a volume of his Addresses, forensic and 
general, that he was willing I should do it, and while he 
lived he should suffer no one else to do it. But, I think, 
upon reflection, he determined that nobody should do it ; 
for I never could get him to do his part in the preparation. 
And without his own revision he would not consent to any 
authorized publication. On the whole, I think he was con- 
tent with traditional jDreservation. 

His lecture on the Sea, which was extremely popular, 
was stolen out of his pocket, long ago, but, he said, for six 
years afterwards, he could have repeated it word for word. 
However, said he, I think I can dig uj) a good deal of it out 
of my mind, with you now. 

He remarked on the very evanescent nature of tradi- 
tionary rejjute — in reply to my suggestion that he did not 
take half care enough of his fame — and observed how en- 
tirely Samuel Dexter had faded from memory; of whom, 
said he, I used to hear the elder generation of judges and 
lawyers say that he had made arguments greater than Web- 
ster's. I didn't believe it, though, for all that. 

3Iarcli 23. — I introduced a young man of letters to Mr. 
Choate to-day ; and talking about Cicero's letters, how su- 
perior to Webster's, it led him on to Style, 

Tacitus, he said, was far richer and more compact style 
than Cicero's; his was a spoken ^iylQ ] but Tacitus was 
the Macaulay of antiquity. 

If, however, you want letters superficial in thought but 
attractive in manner, etc, read Pliny's, 

Pliny and Tacitus and Seneca lived under an empire 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 299 

and in the favor of the Prince. They, therefore, were, as 
the world went, great men. But their Hves were of an 
easy, epicurean intellectuality, guarded in their s])ecch 
and writings by fears of the emperor, who nevertheless 
favored them. 

Pliny was happy in this. 

But Tacitus was too deep and capacious a nature to be 
content. He was deeply learned in Roman history, and, 
therefore, impregnated with all the swelling sentiments of 
Roman history and grandeur. 

But Pliny was a more shallow nature ; and, therefore, 
he was happy in the imperial sunsliine. 

I spoke of Bolingbroke's style. He said, it didn't 
amount to much, except in his speeches. His style of 
diction, and ease, etc., must have been delightful sp)oken. 
Bolingbroke was deeply versed in history and metaphysics, 
especially moral philosophy. 

Those are the fountains for eloquence, and literature is 
the ft)untain for language ; that is, I mean, said he, a true 
eloquence, a perennial eloquence, not a holiday eloquence. 

September 22. — Coiwersation luith 3Ir. Choate a day or 
two ago. 

I wanted to know if he contemplated going on to the 
United States Supreme Court Bench in place of Curtis re- 
signed. He said he had received an intimation that he 
could have it, and had no doubt he could have the post, if 
he desired it ; but that he would not on any account spend 
a minute in Washington, absorbed, as he should have to 
be, in his evenings in labors and consultations, and in liis 
days in court. 

Here said he, I can do just as I please ; I can earn in 
three months as much as their whole salary, and I can 
work, more or less, as I please. 



300 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

But I should like very mucli I confess to revise the 
whole laiv with a fine library at command. (This legal 
appetite shows the real vigor and aptitude of his mind.) 

I asked him if he did not begin to find the vehement 
labors of advocacy less grateful. He said he should hke 
to retire rather from active practice to quiet office business 
and study. 

Campbell's last volume of the Chancellors, which he had 
just been reading, he vehemently condemned. Why, said 
he, he writes like a gossip, not a jurist. He picks up all 
the exaggerated stories of the Bar and retails them as gos- 
pel. His style moves at a sort of jog-trot pace ; and the 
whole impression made upon you by reading him is not an 
elevated one ; you are rather ashamed than j)roud of your 
profession. 

But how different Talfourd ! In Campbell, a lawyer 
of many years, there's no strain of comment and high 
lament over his cotemporaries, like that burst of Cicero — 
" When I first heard of the death of Hortensius," etc. 

Talfourd's best monument of his mind is his essays. 
That on " The Bar" is fine, where he argues that the Bar 
is not the place for high genius; which is true as the Bible, 
though it's sad to think so. 

Everett was just as much of a figure at his first com- 
ing on the stage as now. 

I remarked upon the exceptional fei-vor of Iris last ora- 
tion before the Harvard Alumni. Yes, I can well imagine 
it, said Choate, for the subject and the place touched all 
the best and most delightful enthusiasms of his life. His 
theme was Studies and Education ; and he must have re- 
called in his own mind the first rush of his enthusiasm for 
letters, when he came bounding on the stage to address 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 



301 



Lafayette— an infinite future brilliant before him, and an 
infinitude of hope. 

Every thing that he loves was there ; in his thoughts, 
his delightful studies, his ideals, his romance. 

I (Choate) read Bayne's books (Christian Life, Essays, 
etc.) with eager pleasure. A little florid ; but he has 
thoughts of great grasp and truth, and he i^ eloquent. 
I read all of him. 

Here was this singular man, lying on a sofa; as he said 
shut out of his library by men cleaning— and "that's 
enough to make any man sick"— here, sick on his sofo, 
and meditating, not upon the common and cheap personal 
details which crowd the minds of common men, but re- 
volving such themes as Cicero's description of Hortensius, 
the dignity of his profession, the elevation of mmd of Tal- 

fourd ! 

It was a marked peculiarity of Mr. Choate's talking, 
that while it was not dogmatic, it was isolated,— as it were 
sohloquizing. It was all out of his head. He begins in- 
stanter to pour forth intellectuahties, and he pours on, and 

on, ceaselessly. 

October 28^/<.— Had an accidental talk with 3Ir. Choate 
this morning in his oftice. I advised him to give his old 
lecture, before the M. L. A. this winter. He went right on 
(turning from his law papers with which he was busy) to 
speak of Grattan, of whom his son-in-law had just import- 
ed a portrait engraved. 

He said, Grattan was not a speaker for a promiscuous 
audience, a stump speaker. He went over their heads al- 
together. 

AVhat then, said I, made him at all popular with the 

multitude.^ 

He replied. It was his vehemence and patriotism. 



302 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE 

Wouldn't vehemence always do the business for the 
tnob? said I. 

No, if a man spoke poetry it wouldn't, said he, 

Tom Corwin, of Ohio, he thought an orator. He would 
fill the cup of your eyes with tears in a single sentence. 
He never spoke with vehemence enough to have his voice 
lose its melody and sweetness. 

Richard Lalor Shiel spoke somewhat like Robert Ran- 
toul. Rantoul was kept down as a mere orator, by his 
learning and his truth of intellect. 

The Agricultural Address of Everett is a master-piece 
of pure rhetoric, as well as full of knowledge and scientific 
accuracy. You always see his unadulterated and singular 
genius in whatever he does. 

I broached to him a project of a book on " Men of 
Destiny." 

Choate, upon the suggestion of this theme, went right 
on to present views upon it, of profound and wide-ranging 
thought, as if he had been studying and cramming on it. 
I was sur2)rised by the sweep and the accuracy of his 
thoughts and his learning ; but most of all at their ori- 
ginality, and the prompt command of them which he 
showed; turning off as he did, suddenly, from law papers 
and thoughts. 

Why, said he, this very morning, by twilight, I was 
reviving my thoughts of Cicero ; and I think I am bet- 
ter able noAv to write about him than when I lectured 
on him. For I understand more fully the relations he 
sustained to the great jjractical leaders of his day. 

" Take care of my interests at Rome," they one and 
all write to him from the provinces ; they leaned on him. 

And then Mr. Choate dashed off at once into a lonii 
extempore talk, in which he seemed to survey off-hand the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 303 

whole field of ancient history and ancient heroes, and their 
mutual relations. 

Alexander the Great, he said, would Grecianise the 
East. To that mysterious undefinable East, all the 
world's great conquerors have turned their thoughts and 
dreams. Nai^oleon had an idea of eastern sway. 

The Greek empire survived the Koman in the Byzan- 
tine civilization, which fell in 1492. Greek life had more 
vitality than the Roman. Grote (the historian) closes his 
last volume with a sigh; as if, with Alexander, Greece 
ended. 

Mr. Choate then mapped out a long series of hooks 
and Review articles, which ought to be read in preparation 
for a book on Men of Destiny. 

He went on then to Rome and Cresar. Cassar ended 
the cabals and was a blessing to Rome. The Roman 
Unity, bringing all the world under one scepter, pros- 
trating all separate nationality of feeling, was eminently 
propitious for Christianity. 

It is very important, he said, to get the modern Ger- 
man thinking on classical subjects, not Lempriere, etc. 

Hannibal we know through Livy, as we used to know 
France through England. Hannibal, in his campaigns, 
represented the rest of mankind against Rome. Carthage 
was not settled by descendants of Ham, but by those of 
Shem who ruled the whole Mediterranean shore. In 
Hannibal, as against Rome, the rest of the ivorld was 

incarnate. 

Returning then to Greece, he said, Pericles gave Art 
to Greece. Themistocles and his colleagues gave her her 
historical existence. Themistocles gave her her navy. 

The Persian war was The Oriental versus The Modern 
civilization. 



304 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

Had Persia conquered, Greece would never have been 
ours in history, and though Kome might have withstood 
the eastern civilization, neither Eome nor the world would 
have had Grreek art and culture. So, Themistocles was a 
" Man of Destiny." 



1858. 

January. — A very interesting and important criminal 
case was tried in this month, in which Mr. Choate made a 
highly effective argument for the prisoner. He afterwards 
talked over the case with me. 

Speaking of the cross examination by one of the coun- 
sel in the case, he said : It is good ; but he seems to me 
too much as if he intended to go at the witness. He has 
a defiant, jubilant air and tone, as if he meant to break 
him down. Now, I (Choate) think the examiner should 
always seem to be after truth. Never come doivn on a wit- 
ness, unless you are satisfied yourself that he is lying. 

Webster never did so. He trimmed down the loose 
statements and exaggerations of the witness, and got his 
matter down to the very bone. But he never exercised 
himself, in driving the witness into little difficulties and 
cornering him in a pettifogging style. 

The jury always sympathize with the witness unless 
they are convinced he is lying. 

He gave a striking illustration, in this case, of his chiv- 
alric sense of professional honor. A dispute arose between 
his junior and the counsel for the government ; fierce, long, 
and bitter. In replying, the attorney for the government 
made a distinction between the senior and the junior coun- 
sel,' characterizing the former as a gentleman, etc. Mr. 
Choate immediately arose and said, that if it was intended 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 305 

thereby to imply his disapprobation of tlie course pursued 
by his junior brother, he must disclaim such a distinction. 

Speaking of this to me, he said, I think my associate 
was wrong, and ill-timed in his remarks, but I would al- 
ways sacrifice even my client to my associate's feelings in 
such a position as that. To appreciate the professional 
kindness of this, the reader must remember that " the cli- 
ent" was Choate's god. 

Mr. Choate said further, that his only objection to Mr. 

, for a judicial office, was, that once, in Court, he 

let his junior be attacked savagely by an older lawyer, and 
did not defend him spiritedly, right or wrong. 

In another conversation, Mr. Choate said. Bead the 
law reports — the cases, not treatises ; nobody reads trea- 
tises. 

Read Shakspeare. To speak to a jury a man wants 
maxims, aphorisms, historical allusions. Shakspeare is 
full of the former. Eead Euripides also, Pinkney used 
to study dictionaries of different phrases for the same idea. 

A real, genuine love for Shakspeare is rare in America. 
Eead him critically with Schlegel. 

A man gets copiousness for speaking, not by mere words, 
but by fullness of thoughts, knowledges. 

In this country especially. Law is the true training for 
poKtics — ^better than metaphysics or logic. 

No occupation is intrinsically satisfying and delightful 
in itself, without reference to the end to be attained by it, 
except Poesy and Painting. Allston used to say, that if 
outside things wouldn't trouble him, he should be su- 
premely happy in his studio ; and I have no doubt of it. 
So, too, with the truly great Poet. 

All great lawyers are great wielders of facts. 

Cicero's face is sad and doubtful. There was good rea- 



306 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

son for it. He was surrounded by pagans, and he knew 
they were all wrong. He knew that far beyond all pagan 
speculation, there was an ocean outside unexplored. 

Bolingbroke was the first orator of England. So noble 
a presence. His sentences have a grand and majestic flovY. 
His diction good, but not superlatively so ; great variety 
of manner. The union of manner with matter is the thing. 
The effect of words is wonderful. Even with thinkers, the 
effect of thoughts when properly dressed is exaggerated. 

Still, as a composer, I stick by Burke ; but he was 
tame and dull in delivery. Delivery is every thing. 

There are many pages in Cicero which are common 
and cheap ; the thoughts are undressed. 

Many pages in Brougham are as good in style as the 
best of the ancients. 

Canning had a most choice and harmonious diction. 

The States are, as it were, the Police of the Union. 

END OF CONVERSATIONS. 

I have the record of no other conversations which I 
deem it proper to publish. In the foregoing, I have care 
fully eliminated every thing which I thouglit might wound 
the feelings of the living, or be ungrateful to the friends 
of the dead. 

In some cases, as in regard to the Republican party, I 
have put down much of what Mr. Choate said to me, be- 
cause it was in accordance with what he said in public, 
and made no secret of 

Should anybody feel rightfully aggrieved by any thing 
he said, which is here recorded, no one would be more sur- 
prised and regretful than the author of the volume. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF MR. CHOATE TO THE AUTHOR. 

A FEW extracts from the following letters of Mr. Choate, 
are given, to illustrate the easy, si^ortive, kindly and yet 
thoughtful tone of his mind in familiar epistolary compo- 
sition. 

The letter succeeding contains Mr. Choate's theory and 
oj)inion ui)on collegiate education. It Avas written to a 
common friend of his and of mine, to dissuade me from 
leaving Yale College in the junior year ; a stej) which was 
contemplated — not, as he supposes in the letter, from pe- 
cuniary considerations, but only from the natural impa- 
tience for active life common to " Young America." 

BosTOx, 5th May, 1846. 
Dear : 

You have expressed so much friendship for young Mr. 
Parker, that I take the liberty to repeat to you in a note 
what I once said in your presence upon the subject of his 
leaving college before the end of his regular course. 

When I was a boy I recollect that a judicious and dear 
friend said to me — himself an energetic professional man — ■ 
not a graduate, that a young man had better borrow money 
at thirty-three per cent, to supply himself with a collegiate 
education, than not to have it. The observation of every 
year since has confirmed the justice of this remark, as in- 
deed — such is the progress of competition and of mental 



308 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

culture in this country — the remark itself groios truer 
every year. No dilig-ence in a profession ever can meet 
the want of that liberality, breadth, comprehension and 
elegance of mind, tastes and aims, which it is the specific 
function of university education to impart. One may 
grow dexterous, sharp, clever ; but he will be an artisan 
only — narrow, illiberal, undeveloped, suhordmate. The 
exceptions are too rare to be reckoned on. 

It is not, then, so much the danger to the steadi- 
ness and tenacity of Mr. Parker's character, resulting 
from so sudden and great an abandonment of former 
plans, though always there is danger in that — that I 
fear. It is the loss of just so many years of the best 
possible preparation for the part of a finished man. It 
is the sacrifice of an entire life to the convenience of a 
few introductory months of it. If you ever see him now, 
I assure you I think you can not better evince the reality 
of your regard for him than by advising him — if there is 
need of it, which I have never supposed was the case — 
rather to borrow money, to teach or to write, for the 
means of complete academical education — to submit to 
whatever self-denial — itself highest of disci})line, rather 
than fail of the full and perfect fruit of this grand means to 
a true greatness. I know he will thank you for it, while 
he lives. ^^ Haec olhn (remind him) meminisse juvahit." 

The little I have seen of him inspires me with interest 
in his welfare. Your friendship for him and his friends is 
an additional reason why I could almost venture to give 
him direct advice. 

But I have thought it less likely to be regarded as ob- 
trusive, if I said it to you, whose kindness will excuse 
every thing. I am, most truly, your friend and servant, 

KuFus Choate. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 309 

The intimation contained in the last paragraj)h of this 
letter above, exhibits Mr. Choate's characteristic delicacy 
of feeling. He hesitated to write to a youth for whom he 
condescended to feel an interest, upon an important step 
in life, lest it should seem obtrusive ; but took the trouble 
to write to a third party a letter to he shown to the boy. 

The next letter is the first of several which I received 
from him on his short visit to Europe in 1850. I make a 
few characteristic extracts from them. 

Off Halifax — Thursday noon. 
My Dear Mr. Parker : 

I greet you from this summer's sea, and give you an- 
other and more particular farewell than I had a chance 
to do before. I hope I shall find you well, and fast and 
far risen to the noble places of the bar upon my return. 

Your sincere friend, 

E. Choate. 

Liverpool, July. 
My Dear Mr. Parker : 

I have just got here, after a very pleasant passage, 

pleasant in spite of a good deal of sea-sickness. 

I spend to-day here, and go to London to-morrow. All 
England mourns Sir Eobert Peel. I had a letter to him, 
and feel a personal sadness. 

Liverpool is a larger but toors'e New York — trade, trade, 
tovjours — and an immensity of that — and nothing else. 
It is English trade, however— /a »• and vast. 

V V 5.f {,;- V- J,'; gf 

Accept my most warm good wishes. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. Choate. 



310 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

London, July 11 1850. 
My Dear Mr. Parker : 

I have just got here — ^long enough to admit the gen- 
eral vast vision of London — but with no analysis of its 
huge rotundity into particulars. Soon I shall subject it to 
more successive examination, after the edge of appetite is 
a little dulled. You will have heard that Sir J. Wilde is 
the new Chancellor, that the A. Gr. (Attorney Greneral) 
succeeds him, and the Solicitor General Romilly takes his 
place. These appointments are quite of course, it is said, 
under the settled practice of administration. In a general 
way, I must say, the ivig is fatal to the English lawyer. 
His head is spoiled ; he is made formal, a mannerist, a 
technicologist, sad to behold. Give me thus far the Su- 
preme Court at Washington, for grace, dignity, interest, 
230wer. But I have seen little, though I have run into 
several courts. 

••* «•* »** •*■ ••* **» »ff 

-if #4*" U* '*? «*ff '•? •«* 

Accept my good wishes ever more. 

I am most truly your friend, 

R. Choate. 

London. 
My Dear Mr. Parker : 

I am off to the Continent to-morrow or Monday, for 
some three weeks, to anticipate the sickly season, if such 
there is to be. That over, I shall come again to England, 
Scotland. I have passed a delicious week here, crowded 
and fatiguing, but full of every species of interest. I like 
the Bar better, though I have not seen it at its best ; and 
have seen enough to discern that, with a grand question, 
the House of Commons is still the most interesting body 
of men on earth. Not that I have seen or heard a man in 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 311 

either House or in Court, to be named with Mr. Wehster, 
or Clay, or Calhoun, or a half dozen others. But this 
body is the Ruler of the World ; history and position give 
it an interest to which no accomplishment or ability of its 
individual members entitles it. 

Thoroughly business-like debating, however, has a 
great charm anywhere ; and here not one word is sacrificed 
to grace or exhibition. 

Mr. Macaulay struck me as much as any man I ever 
saw ; affected in manner as I thought, his language is flu- 
ent and recherche, and his matter rich and redundant like 
his writing. 

But we will talk all this over at home. 

"Write me that you are well, prosperous and contented. 
Most affectionately yours, K. Choate. 

Paris, July 24th. 
My Dear Mr. Parker : 

You know all about Paris, or I would testify also to 
its unmatched interest and beauty, present, visible and tra- 
ditionary. But as I am in full volley of visions just now, 
and not very well either, I beg you to allow me to say only 
my good wishes for you. 

Your friend, R. Choate. 

Geneva, August 9th. 
My Dear Mr. Parker : 

Extremuyn hunc mihi concede lahorem — though that 
is not the true use of the lines. ■■•'■ * * 

I am thinking of home, but first of Italy. 
Most affectionately yours, 

R. Choate. 



312 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

The following note is thrown in merely to show the 
style of his off-hancl eveiy-clay home correspondence. 

Boston, (1856), Court street. 
Dear Mr. Parker : 

I am grieved to say that I am so situated to-morrow 

that I can not have the pleasure to see you at your house. 

If it shall please Providence to give me rest, on the same 

day of the succeeding week I shall he yours. 

Most truly yours, K. Choate. 

Saturday (in haste). 

The following note was written by Mr. Choate to the 
author in consequence of a criticism in a newspaper, which 
characterized an article by the author in Putnam's Maga- 
zine on Kufus Choate's Eloquence, as not doing full justice 
to him in that regard. The article forms the succeeding 
chapter of this work ; and the point most objected to ap- 
peared to be that Mr. Choate was described as "not a nat- 
ural orator." The author considered, however, that the 
general result of the whole description ranked Mr. Choate 
much higher than a mere natural orator ; and placed him 
among the orators of intellect and high art. 

The criticism would not be especially deserving of 
notice, except as impeaching the author's fidelity in de- 
scribing his eminent friend — a friend, however, for whom 
he entertained an admiration which did not lose all dis- 
crimination in its ardor. 

Upon reading the criticism alluded to, Mr. Choate wrote 
the following note to the author : 

Friday, May 11, '55. 
Dear Mr. Parker : 

I had hoped to see you before this and thank you for 
your Putnam ; * * * '•■' * 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 313 

But I have recovered slowly ; have not yet been out but 
twice, except to the dooor ; and my nerves are not quite 
equal ijet to legible handwriting. 

When we meet I will bring up all arrears, and mean- 
time I beg you to be sure that I wholly appreciate the jus- 
tice, the friendship, and the independence of your article. 
I should have assured you of this long ago, but I have 
been generally Avholly unable to write a legible word. 

Accept my best wishes for a happy summer. Most 
truly your friend, 

KuFus Choate. 

The two compositions which now follow the above let- 
ters, Mr. Choate told me, at the time of their newspaper 
publication, were written by him. They appeared in the 
Boston Daily Courier as editorial matter. The one upon 
Mr. Everett was suggested by his oration at Dorchester 
on Wednesday, the 4th of July, 1855 ; and was published 
on Friday, the next day but one. 

Mr. Choate was then still feeble from his long sickness, 
but he was upon the platform with the orator. His feel- 
ings toward Mr. Everett were especially warm at the mo- 
ment, in consequence of the kind attention of visits and 
talk which he had constantly paid him during his confine- 
ment. In one of the previous recorded conversations, he 
refers to this assiduous kindness and his own almost affec- 
tionate gratitude. 

The article on Mr. Webster was suggested by the sixth 
occurrence of his birth-day after his decease. It breathes 
the full fervor of his passionate idolatry of that great man. 

It appeared in print on the morning of that anniver- 
sary, Monday, the 18tli of January, 1858. 

]4 



314 REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

ME. EVERETT AT HOME. 

A DESCKIPTIVE AKTICLE, WHITTEN 
BY RUFUS CHOATE. 

The newspapers will have, before this time, placed Mr. 
Everett's admirable Fourth of July discourse in the hands 
of the whole public ; but one of his audience may still be 
permitted to speak of the impression it made on him in 
the actual delivery. It is little to say that it had brilliant 
success. Certainly it had. Some five or six thousand per- 
sons — but, however, a vast multitude — ladies and gen- 
tlemen, children in green chaplets from school, and old age 
with his staff shaking in both his hands ; of all varieties 
of culture and of opinion — by silence, by tears, by laugh- 
ter, by hearty and frequent applause, for more than two 
hours of not very comfortable weather, confessed the spell 
of the spoken eloquence of written t hough Ls and thoughts 
not written ; and when he ended, sat still fixed to hear, as 
if the spell would not bo broken. 

It is saying more to say, that it deserved all its success. 
The noble, alliucnt and beautiful genius, and the effective 
trained and po])ular talent, all remain at their best. The 
same playfulness, the same elegance, the same memory of 
his learning, the same justness and exactness of thought 
and image, the same discernment of truth, the same fidel- 
ity to history and biography, the same philosophic grasp 
and sweep, the same intense American feeling ; occasion- 
ally an ascent to more than his former height of eloquence, 
pathos and poetry — an impression altogether of more and 
even truer wealth of mind. One is glad to see such powers 
and such attainments beariuir a charmed life. Lonu' and 
late be the day when the "old bell" shall announce that 
the charm is dissolved, and the life on earth is quenched. 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 315 

The topics and method of the discourse, now that it is 
printed, we need not dwell on. Tlie treatment of the 
whole subject, too, can be ai^preciated by those who did 
not hear him, only by reading it. What struck us, among 
other tilings, was the affectionate and pains-taking fidelity 
with which the local history and biography of Dorchester 
were displayed — its jjcriods, growths, acts, and good men 
in church and state, remembered as if it were a duty of 
justice and genealogy as well as love — and yet that all 
these narrower annals were so gracefully connected with, 
and made to exemplify a history of heroic times and re- 
nowned events — " the foundation of a state" — the maxims 
and arts imperial by which it lives, grows, and works out 
its ends — the throes and glory of revolution — effected by 
the shedding of the blood of man, and conducting to a true 
national life. In this way Dorchester became represent- 
ative, and, as it were, illustrious — as a handful of minerals 
may bo made to show forth the history of a world, and of 
cycles. 

More than once the speaker rose from the plane of liis 
elegant and clear English, and moving naiTative, and just 
thought, to passages of superlative beauty. Of these were, 
that which sketched the last man of the Massachusetts tribe 
of Indians ; that which contrasted the loving, cultivated, 
auxiliar nature which enfolds us, with that austerer nature, 
which repelled the first settlers ; that which imagined the 
Titan sleep of the spent wave at Nahant ; that which con- 
densed the long wrongs of the colonial period into the im- 
age of a slow "night, swept away by the first sharp vol- 
ley on Lexington green ;" and, above all, that which con- 
ceived the memories and the anticipations that might 
labor in the " soul of Washington, at that decisive hour, 
as he stood upon the heights of Dorchester, with the holy 



31G EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

stars for his camp-fire, and the dcep-fokling shadows of 
night, looped by the hand of God to the four quarters of 
the sky, for the curtains of his tent. 

And these all, in their places, were ajjpropriate, spon- 
taneous, and helpful. Nunc erat his locus. 

Shall we confess that there was a certain trait pervad- 
ing the whole discourse which gave it an interest even be- 
yond its wisdom and eloquence ? More than ever before, 
in our observations of his public efforts, his heart was al- 
lowed to flow from his lips. It was as when one of a large 
and happy household, on a holiday, remembers and recalls 
to the rest the time when the oldest of them were young — 
what they used to see, and what they used to hear told — 
the speaker and the hearer, the while, sometimes smiling 
and sometimes sad — smiling often with a tear in the eye. 
Such he seemed, and those who have only seen and heard 
him on some high theme and day, and when he might ap- 
pear to be pleading for the Crown of Grold, should have 
seen and heard him at home to know and feel how much 
he is made to be loved. 

Mr. Everett declares himself "retired from public life, 
without the expectation or the wish to return to it, but 
the contrary ; and that few things would better please him 
than to find a quiet retreat in his native town, where he 
may pass the rest of his humble career in the serious stud- 
ies and tranquil pursuits which befit the decline of life, till 
the same 'old bell' shall announce that the chequered 
scene is over, and the weary is at rest." Scholars will re- 
call the pathetic expression of Cicero. Nimc vero, quo- 
niatn, quae putavi esse i^rcclara, expertus sum, quam es- 
sent inania, cum omnibus Musis rationcm habere cogito. 
But this was after his splendid Consulship, and when he 
had no longer a civil future. Until that has been Mr. Ev- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 317 

erett's whole experience, why should he employ his lan- 
guage ? 

REFLECTIONS ON 
THE BIRTH-DAY OF WEBSTER. 

1ST II OF JANUARY , 1S5S, WEITTEK 
EY KUFUS CIIOATE. 

This eighteenth clay of January is the anniversary of 
the birth of Daniel Webster. Let it be celebrated as be- 
comes his memory. Willi composed and slow steps — in 
imagination, if not in reality — let us walk about his grave ; 
think pensively and filially and reverentially for some brief 
space of all which made up that prodigious individuality 
and identity ; — the majestic frame and brow — the deep, 
grand tone, stirring or melancholy — the supreme power — 
the loving kindness,- — bid fair peace be to his sable shroud, 
and so, Hail and Farewell ! And let this thought revive 
the memory of duties which we once all of us leaped to 
perform for him, when he was living — when he stood in all 
things proudly eminent on the high place of his power and 
his hopes — when the shadow of his name and presence 
came between others and the glittering and difficult prizes 
toward which their eyes were straining-. 

Sometimes he incurred the lot of all the great, and was 
traduced and misrepresented. Sometimes he was pursued 
as all central figures in great triumphal processions are 
pursued — as all glory is pursued — by calumny ; as Demos- 
thenes, the patriot statesman ; as Cicero, the father of his 
country ; as Grotius, the creator of public law ; as Som- 
ers, as Sidney, as Burke, as Grattan, as Hamilton, were 
traduced. Even when he was newly dead, the tears and 
praises of his whole country did not completely silence one 
robed and reverend backbiter. But to-day, who remem- 
bers that he was ever ajiproached by calumny ? Who 



31S REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

remembers that they ever questioned the exaltation and 
breadth of his patriotism — the usefulness of his public life 
— the wisdom of his spoken and written counsels — the su- 
premacy of his genius — ^his observance, from the day when 
he was old enough to know what is virtue to the last 
grand scene, of the precept, " Let all the ends thou aimst 
at be thy country's, thy Grod's, and truth's ?" Who is 
there that feels that any duty of vindication of the dead is 
left for him ? No more than you will feel on the evening 
of the 22d of February that you are required to clear the 
awful greatness and white fame of Washington from the 
charge of the forged letters — the charge of monarchism — 
the charge of loving England which he defeated, better 
than America which he saved. 

And how every hour — every passing hour — moves all, 
of all creeds and parties, rather to mourn him and wish 
him back from his rest to his labors ! Who, looking to the 
Capitol — to Kansas — to Central America, does not feel 
that he could lay his head more calmly on his pillow at 
night — that he would raise it in the morning with a more 
trusting thanks2;ivino: to God, if he mis^ht know once more 
that the old pilot was at his post — so near the helm that 
when the steersman's head begins to reel, and the whitened 
lee-shore to throw its foam in thunder above and over the 
fore-topmast, he could grasp that helm and hold it with 
the hand of a master, until the ship shoul'l clear the 
promontory on which no light-house gleams, and rise and 
fall in safety again on the deep, open sea ! 

Sometimes it ajipears to us that the memories of Web- 
ster tend to group themselves into a threefold j)resentmcnt 
of his career and character. We would say, almost, that 
there were three Websters — three quite strongly marked 
and successive periods of degrees and kinds of growth of the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 319 

one Webster, in our observation of that achieved and ulti- 
mate greatness. 

There was first the rising and established lawyer and 
American advocate ; this was the Mr. Webster of the 
time from 1817 until he entered the Senate of the United 
States. 

In the second, a period from his entrance into the Sen^ 
ate until he took the Department of State under Harrison 
in 1841, he had ascended and was walking on the highest 
places of American public life. And herein it is the states- 
man ripe, but animated and vigorous — the great orator — 
the expounder of the Constitution — the leader of the stormy 
debate, who thunders and who rules — the age of his power 
— the age of his triumphs. 

In the third, the last, the grandest, he assumes the port 
and wears the habit and enacts the functions of an authori- 
tative, wise, and patriotic counselor of State, verging on what 
we call old age — the virtu )us, venerable and honorable old 
age, from whose experience the nation may draw, as from 
an oracle, her maxims of policy-^her arts of glory. These 
w(n-e the three Websters of our own personal observation ; 
the same in all, yet how unlike ; in the first — in the sec- 
ond sometimes — "the sea in a storm ;" in the third, "the 
sea in a calm." In all "a great ])roduction of nature." 

Of these three aspects of this remarkable greatness, we 
know not to which we had rather turn. It is as if one, on 
a Christmas eve, should run over the seasons of the closin^i' 
year and try to resolve which he loved best, and which he 
had rather live over ; the stirring life, the first zephyr, the 
manifold birth of bloom and music, in earth and sky, of 
spring ; the grander stillness of the summer noontide, the 
passing off of the tempest charged with thunder, the bow 
resting in the cloud ; or the fruitful and bland autumn, 



320 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CIIOATE. 

the nodding harvest, the harvest-home, the thanksgiving, 
the serener bine, enlivened with golden light. 

Among this series of glories and beauties and joys, we 
can not choose ; but we may bless God for them all. 
Happy in all his life 1 Happy in what he won — happy in 
what he failed to win ! Happy in the good he did, the 
evil he hindered, the example he set — seeds of union and 
patriotism which his hands scattered ! 

Go, young men of his country ! bend before his tomb ; 
mourn there as for a ftither departed. Feel there how just, 
eloquent, and mighty is death, and how true it is that God 
only is great 1 But then return, and find in the volumes 
of thought, and in the great acted life of Webster, the ge- 
nius, wisdom, and influences over which death has no 
power. 



CHAPTER VII. 

RUFUS CHOATE AS AN ORATOR. 

The following description of Mr. Choate's eloquence 
Avas originally written for Putnam's Magazine in 1855. 

It excited some animadversion at the time ; inasmuch 
as it discriminated with regard to the powers of the great 
advocate, and was not blindly eulogistic. 

If the reader, however, will look back to the last letter, 
in the preceding chapter, he will see what was Mr. Choate's 
own opinion of the correctness of the description. 

The same description was published in 1857 as one of 
the series of sketches in the author's " Golden Age of 
American Oratory.'' 

Subsequent observation has only confirmed the opinion 
there expressed of the jDCCuliur character of Mr. Choalc's 
oratory. I regard it as entitled to take rank in the highest 
orders of intellectual rather than spontaneous oratory. 

We wish to consider Mr. Clioate, now, solely as an ora- 
tor, and to allude to any other qualities of mind or body 
which he may possess, only as they bear upon his oratory. 
We do not consider Mr. Choate a natural orator, — a horn 
orator. We consider him the first and foremost of made 
orators. His mind and his will have formed the elements 
and talents, which nature gave him, into an orator of the 
highest mark. Lord Chesterfield, in his letter to his son, 
continually told him that any man of reasonable abilities 
might make himself an orator. The son tried Ms best, and 
broke down hopelessly the very first time he got on his 



322 REMINISCENCES OE RUE US CHOATE. 

legs in the House of Commons. While, then, this sweep- 
ing proposition is not true in its widest sense, it is un- 
doubtedly true that any man, possessing a certain class of 
intellectual and bodily gifts, may make himself a very 
creditable orator. And Mr. Choate is a magnificent ex- 
am2)le of this truth. For he is one who, by effort and 
specific mental training, has brought all his intellectual 
beauty and wealth to the tip of his tongue. But he is a 
manufacture, not a creation. And yet, just as the fabrics 
of art are often far more beautiful and useful than the raw 
work of nature, so he, as he stands before us — the manu- 
facture of the fine arts, is more delightful to hear, and in- 
spiring to look upon, and far higher in the scale of being, 
than any mere creation of pulse and passion. 

A natural orator we think one, whose capital power is 
in his character and passion ; and in whom these qualities 
are so plainly and spontaneously developed that he would 
be successfully elof[uent with little art and less learning. 
These he may add, but he could be very effective without 
them. In the passion and the character of such men lurks 
the magic — their amazing will, their triumphal overbcar- 
ingness, their spontaneous, irresistible self-assertion. Every 
now and then there comes along some itinerant preacher, 
or spiritual tinker, or rescued dram-drinker, or other sort 
of person, who, by the sheer force of liis strong, sturdy 
character, and his equally strong animal passion, not set 
forth in any dictionary words but in common talk, lifts 
great audiences to dizzy heights of enthusiasm, and stirs 
unwonted throbbings in men's hearts. Chatham and Pat- 
rick Henry were natural orators of superior order. And 
Henry Clay was of the same school. He, however, super- 
added much, but he was a native-born after all. When, 
in his magnificent moments, men saw him agitate the 



REMINISCENCES OF R U F U S C II O A T E . :J2l^ 

Senate into a fury, and then, as one born to command, 
"ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm," they felt in 
their inmost soul that he had nature's patent for his ora- 
torio tyranny. When Mirabeau one day screamed into 
the startled ear of the French Constituent Assembly, the 
words, " If I shake my terrible locks, all France trembles," 
he said wliat required no learning to say, l)ut lliey were 
mighty words, and they shook the Assembly. 

We do not think any great natural orator could be a 
great lawyer. His temiDcrament must sweep him too fast 
for the severe and accurate research and application which 
law demands of her votaries. The orator, too, reasons 
eminently in the concrete, in pictures and in deductions 
which are, logically speaking, gymnastic jumps, over 
Avhich his hearer must go only by the bridge of sym- 
pathy, not logic. The disciple of the black-letter abhors 
the concrete as nature does a vacuum, and revels in the 
abstract. But the orator of mind can combine both 
these elements. He can be a great lawyer or logician, 
and an orator also. Cicero, we have always thought, 
belonged to this set, and was of course the greatest of 
his race. Mirabeau had something of both these quali- 
ties, and wonderfully disi)layed them, when, at the end 
of a set harangue, most logically reasoned and prepared, 
he saw the stormy house before him still unsubdued. He 
had taken his seat, but he rose again — he rushed to the 
tribune, and rolled forth instantly a tide of burning 
periods, wholly unpremeditated, which went crashing 
and tet),ring into the ears of his adversaries like so many 
hot shot. 

This combination of diverse powers is of course indis- 
pensable to the truly great advocate, and this ]\Ir. Choate 
exhibits in the most thorough development of each. His 



324 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

main power is by no means in native force of character ; 
nor do we think it lies chiefly in passion. His sensibilities 
we should judge to have been by nature lively, and his 
mind, grasping things with great brightness and fullness 
of detail, and calUng into play with corresponding inten- 
sity the appropriate accompanying feelings, has thus 
forced them into an overstrained activity, by constantly 
working them into violent play. But we very much 
doubt if there was any wild natural outgushing of ora- 
torio feeling, self-created and incapable to be kept in or 
tamed down. He is a great actor, an artist of the first 
rate, but an actor after all. We rather think, from the 
piles of written sheets behind which he rises to address 
a jury, and which disappear one by one as the speech 
rolls on, that every word of the eloquent and impassioned 
argument is all there, cut and dried. To analyze his 
power, then, we must trace the threads of the intellectual 
fabric, warp and woof, and imagine it delivered with vehe- 
ment will to persuade and energetic fervor to hammer it 
home, but deriving no other aid or appliance whatever 
from delivery ; hai'dly anything of the imperial command, 
the basilisk eye, the untamable spirit rushing forth, mock- 
ing and defying opposition ; but we must track the curious 
working of a grand machine — the intellect ; patient, steady, 
pressing, storming by turns — sometimes bearing down op- 
position gradually and piece by piece, and sometimes knock- 
ing it in the head. We heard Webster once, in a sentence 
and a look, crush an hour's argument of the curious work- 
man ; it was most intellectually wire-drawn and hair-split- 
ting, with Grecian sophistry, and a subtlety the Leontine 
Gorgias might have envied. It was about two car-wheels, 
which to common eyes looked as like as two eggs ; but Mr. 
Choate, by a fine line of argument between tweedle-dum 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 325 

and tweedle-dee, and a discourse on " the fixation of 
points" so deep and fine as to lose itself in obscurity, 
shov/ed the jury there was a heaven-wide difference be- 
tween them. " But," said Mr. Webster, and his great 
eyes opened wide and black, as he stared at the big twin 
wheels before him, " Gentlemen of the jury, there they 
are — look at 'em " ; and as he i^ronounced this answer, in 
tones of vast volume, the distorted wheels seemed to 
shrink back again into their original similarity, and the 
long argument on the " fixation of points " died a natural 
death. It was an example of the ascendency of mere 
character over mere intellectuality ; but so much greater, 
nevertheless, the intellectuality. 

He has not, then, any of those remarkably rare and 
bold traits of character, conspicuous enough singly, to 
account for his forensic supremacy. When not actually 
in a fight, he is quiet, facile, accommodating, and bland. 
You would by no means suspect the volcanic energies 
lurking beneath, from any appearances on the surface. 
In his wan and worn and bloodless but benignant face, 
you would see enough to suspect intellectual treasures 
stored up, and an inner life of strange and unusual topics 
and movement. He looks as if he moved about in his 
own mysterious solitude for ever, whether in crowds or 
all alone ; like some* stray child of a land bathed in sun- 
set beauty, musing ever on warm Arabian skies, and the 
burning stars and gorgeous bloom of the hanging gardens 
of his home. But his mere oratorio presence is nothing. 
And therefore he never impresses an audience, especially a 
professional one, with a sense of his greatness, till he does 
something ; till he speaks or acts in the legal drama. We 
see no external symptom of overpowering natiye charac- 
ter ; no symptom of anything which would make you 



326 EEMIN I SCIENCES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 

think that tliat man, by his grand movement, by his 
basilisk eye, by his uplifted arm, might strike dumb op- 
position and palsy hate. And yet we have seen him 
when in battle, his battle — that of thoughts and words, 
standing right over a legal adversay with outstretched 
arm, with eye burning black with smothered fire, and 
face wdiite with a deathlike palor, his form erect, his 
brow more spacious, and the dark curly locks on his 
temples fluttering about and waving, and uplifting like 
battle-flags, to flaunt defiance at the foe — and then he 
looked the oratorio war-god. 

Why was this ? It was because at those moments his 
mind, wherein his power lies, was all kindled and crowded 
and stretching with thought, and bursting with intellectual 
passion. It was the burning and beaming mhid of the man 
which lit the bold glance in his eye, and lifted and bright- 
ened his proud crest. Like all the first class orators, he has 
in the recesses of his nature the Titan forge and the Cyclo- 
pean fires for the manufacture of great effects ; but the 
flames to enkindle them come from his intellect, not from 
his soul. His combustions catch fire from his brain, not 
from his blood. 

It is not so with the born orator. When he rises to 
speak, his sensibilities, bodily and mental, stimulate his 
mind, not his mind the sensibilities ; his mind does not 
start his blood, his blood sets his mind going. 

We must explore, then, the sources of Mr. Choate's 
achievement chiefly in his mind. And his intellectual en- 
ginery may be all generally summed up and grouped in a 
few capital heads, thus. 

At the basis of all lies undoubtedly a strong, vigorous, 
masculine understanding. He has at once an observing 
and an organizing mind ; an eye hawkhke for the percep- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C II GATE. 327 

tion of jiarticulars, and a logical faculty sturdy and severe 
to generalize and group them. As Mr. Webster said, in liis 
eulogy of Jeremiah Mason, " He grasps his point and holds 
it." Superficial observers, remarking the luxuriance of his 
metaphoric style and the poetical abandonment of his pas- 
sion, would be apt to conclude that the gay structure of his 
arguments was flimsy ; but let them strike their heads 
against it and they would see. For in his wildest and most 
flaming outbreak of even an occasional oration, seeming 
almost a mere jubilate of conscious enthusiasm, there is a 
massive well-set framework and firm foundation. That 
mastery of the law, in its learning and its severest aj)pli- 
cation, with which he daily conquers in the courts, that 
entire memory and command of the thousand facts and 
details of a complicated case which every argument evinces, 
would alone show how firm and solid was the texture of his 
mind. More than once has a judge of the Supreme Court 
remarked that that tribunal listened to no man with more 
respect on naked abstract legal points ; and we ourselves 
have heard one of the oldest, dryest, keenest, ablest and 
most fancy-Avithered lawyers at our bar say that, on the 
closest question of contingent remainders or executory de- 
vises, he would trust Eiifus Choate's legal learning and 
logic as soon as any leader's in the law. 

But we are discussing him as an orator, not as a lawyer, 
and we cite it only as a proof of the strength of his mind, 
which forms a capital element of his oratory. In truth, he 
has a gladiatorial intellect, in strength as well as combat- 
iveness. 

Intimately blended with this power, and giving light 
and vivacity to all its operations, is that regal faculty 
which in him is beyond all measure splendid — his imagin- 
ation and fancy ; and this flames ever on the iron chain of 



328 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CUOATE. 

his logic, as the electric spark flashes upon the iron road of 
its telegraphic course. He can present his thought as bald 
and hare as bleaching bones, but he prefers to give it forth, 
as it first comes to him, embodied in beauty and robed in 
splendor. You can hardly ever listen to him ten minutes 
anywhere without being waked up by some surprising im- 
aginative analogy or fanciful illustration. In court, or with 
an audience, this warm imagery appears, equally when in 
an insurance case he apostrophizes " the spirit which leads 
the philanthropy of two hemispheres to the icy grave of 
Sir John Franklin," or when in Faneuil Hall he conjures 
up before the eyes of a wildly applauding political assem- 
bly a vision beauteous of " the dark-eyed girls of Mexico 
wailing to the light guitar. Ah, woe is me, Albania, for 
a thousand years !' and by the vividness of his conception 
and the corresponding intensity of his delivery, causing the 
people almost to hear with the mortal ear the long lament 
as of the dausrhters of Judea over a ruined land — sounds the 
most melancholy of all that rise from the sorrow-stricken 
fields of earth. 

But reason and fancy would do the orator no good 
without an emotional and kindling temperament ; a phys- 
ical warmth, as well as a moral and emotional suscepti- 
bility. Poets often have the latter, but no physical fire 
and ardor ; orators often have the former, but no fanciful 
brightness. He has both. But, as we intimated in the 
outset, his animal sensibility is subordinate and inferior to 
his intellectual sensibility. And in him this is as keen as 
it was in an Ionian Greek. No child of Athens, standing 
in the shadow of the moonlighted Parthenon, ever felt his 
nostrils quiver or his heart expand with more genuine in- 
tellectual sentimentality, than he is conscious of when at 
the bidding of his quickening fancy there rises full on the 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 329 

mirror of his mind the radiant architecture of some great 
argument. 

And in these capital characteristics we have in a larsre 
view the leading elements of his oratory ; the solidity of 
understanding which fixes the tough and close-clamped 
framework of his creations ; the imagination which clothes 
and paints them with the roses and the garlands and the 
Tyrian C(dors of an inexhaustible fancy, and breathes over 
them the beauty not born of earth ; and the sensibility 
which stirs our life-blood like the mountain bugle, or 
touches the sealed fountain of our tears like a tone from 
the spirit land. 

And hence springs his most remarkable and unparalleled 
ability to take any part of his subject, whether a theme or 
evidence given on the witness stand, and force it altogether 
out of its natural relations, by conceiving it with unnatural 
intenseness in his own mind, and then, by his mingled im- 
agination and sensibility and wealth of language investing 
it with a character not its own — rainbow hues or suljjhm-e- 
ous fires as he chooses — and commending it thus at will to 
the benediction or the malediction of men. How often 
have we seen the opposite counsel in a case utterly puzzled 
and baffled by the strange way in which Choate seemed to 
be putting the facts to the jury ; and interrupting him 
again and again in vain, met and foiled every time by the 
reply, " Do I misstate the facts ? I'm only arguing upon 
them." And the discomforted interrujjter would sink back 
in despair, utterly unable to detect precisely where was the 
error, yet feeling sure that he heard no such evidence. The 
fact was, Choate had the basis fact all right — he was only 
painting and inflaming it with his own colors ; but the 
paints on his palette were to his adversary's as the sky of 
Italy to the sky of Sweden ; and they were brought out 



330 REMINISCE NOES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

on his canvas in even more perplexing and bewildering 
hue by the impassioned heat of his unbridled sensibility. 

Again and again have we seen this imaginative concep- 
tion, and distorting description, and passionate expression, 
giving birth to an inspiring contagious and irresistible en- 
thusiasm, carrying him right over weak spots in the argu- 
ment of the case, as the skater swift as lightning swims in 
safety the cracking and bending ice. Scarlet, Lord Abin- 
ger used to wheedle juries across the w^eak places, but 
Choate rarely does that — he prefers to rush them right 
over. 

Brilliantly was this capacity exhibited in the case of 
Captain Martin, indicted in the United States District 
Court for casting away his vessel off San Domingo, with 
the intent to procure the insurance. The government had 
been at the cost of sending a special agent to Hayti for 
evidence, and he had brought back with him a black man 
from Solouque's empii'c, called by the swelling apellation of 
" Duke Pino." All the other evidence was manageable, 
but his testimony was very ugly. He swore positively, 
through an interpreter, that he dived down under water 
and examined the logwood cargo of the ship and her star- 
board bow, and in the latter he found a great smooth hole, 
not rouoii enough for a rock to have made, and which evi- 
dently was the death-wound of tlie ship. All the other 
parts of the proof of the government might be got over ; 
some of them indeed were somewhat favorable ;, but that 
awful hole threatened to swallow up case, captain, advocate 
and all. All the rest he managed adroitly and aptly ; but 
when on the second day of his argument to the jury he 
came to that part, he didn't blink it at all ; he " rose right 
at the wall." He told the jury in set terms, they need not 
think he was afraid of that dark Duke, butting liis black 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 331 

head among tlie logwood fiitlioms deep under water ; and 
then all at once he opened his whole armament, in such a 
double broadside of eloquence and fiction and ridicule, that 
he riddled poor Duke Pino himself into a perfect honey- 
comb. And then, taking advantage of a felicitous circum- 
stance in the captain's conduct— to wit, that he did not fly 
when first accused— he concluded with a singularly noble, 
simi)le and scriptural burst, which came in like a grand 
trumpet choral, to crown his lyrical oration : " Gentlemen 
of the jury, the accused man paused, he did not fly-^for he 
turned his eyes tqnvard, and he was thinking of the sub- 
lime promise, ' When thou goest through the fire, thou 
shalt not be burned, and through the deep waters, they 
shall not overflow thee/ " And, saying these words, the 
great advocate sank into his seat. The jury acquitted the 
captain, and the expenses of the expedition of the Baronet 
Pino to America were charged by the government, we 
presume, to "profit and loss," as a pleasure excursion to 
Boston of the ducal diver. 

Indeed, such and so inspiring is his enthusiasm and 
fency, that graver minds than juries surrender to its fasci- 
nations, and more than once the granite nature of Webster 
acknowledged its sway. We remember especially on one 
occasion, sitting behind him on the little seats where the 
American Bar is represented before the judgment-seat of 
last resort in America, the Supreme Court of the United 
States, and hearing him turn to the editor of the IntelH- 
gencer, who sat next him, with an involuntary exclamation, 
as some swelling climax of Choate's eloquence pealed upon 
his ear, "Isn't that fine! isn't that beautiful!" And 
again, at a dinner on the next day, we had a singular pride 
as a fellow- citizen, and an humble admirer of the subject 
of the laudation, in hearing the same great oracle break 



332 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

out with a sort of Johnsonian weight of manner, in answer 
to a somewhat depreciating criticism upon Choate by a 
noted New York lawyer, " Sir, let me tell you Mr. Choate 
is a ivonderful man — he is a marvel." Upon his death-bed, 
he told Mr. Peter Harvey of Boston, that Choate was the 
most brilliant man in America. 

In estimating the parts of the machinery which pro- 
duces his oratorio fabrics, however, we should hardly have 
a just view if we confined the consideration to the chief 
elements only. There are many subordinate instrument- 
alities evoked, some of them spontaneous, and others the 
result of great industry sj^ecifically ajiplied. The trunk 
of an elephant is the instrument by which all his powers 
are chiefly made useful, but the fine prolongation on the 
end of it, by which he can pick up a needle, is as important 
as the main body of it, by which he can fell an oak tree. 

To the solidity of understanding, the picture-like beauty 
of imagination, and the ardent, heart- warming glow of sen- 
sibility, all of which first catch our eye in his performances, 
is to be added that which comes to Mr. Choate from an 
unflagging studiousness, and a scholarly and acquisitive 
taste ; namely, a wonderful wealth of words, beggaring all 
description for copiousness, variety, novelty and effect^ 
Literary allusions, sparkling sentences, and words freighted 
with poetic associations, are so stored in his memory, ap- 
parently, that he can dress his thought as he pleases, plain 
or in gay rhetorical attire, in kitchen garments or in corona- 
tion robes. And this vast command of language is of im- 
mense importance to him in many ways ; for first it rolls 
forth in such an unhesitating and unbroken current, that 
the vehement flow and rush of the speaker's feeling and 
passion are greatly encouraged and helped by it. A vehe- 
ment, headlong style of thought must have a wider and 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 333 

more unencumbered channel for its course than a more 
placid but less moving stream. " Give me," said the 
younger Pliny, in his Ejjistles, " among all the Roman 
Sjieakers, the copious and the abundant orator — he alone 
can command me, and bear me as he Avill." And this is 
as true now in America as it was tlien in Rome. Others 
may sometimes equally delight, but it is the rapid, sweep- 
ing, vehement utterance that most of all takes captive. 
And this command of words, too, enables him to express 
his precise thought, in its minutest shade of meaning. 
Very few men in the Avorld can say exactly what they 
mean ; they can approach it, and go about it and about it, 
but never hit it, ; but he, whenever he chooses to be close 
and precise, can not only reach the target, but hit the 
" bull's eye" every time he tries. 

But more even to the orator than freedom of feeling 
or precision of expression is the ability, which a copious 
richness of diction afibrds, to color, and gild, and lift up 
his idea or sentiment, by words which are in themselves 
metaphors and pictures, and which can not be denied to 
be descriptive of the theme, but yet color and heighten 
})r()digiously its impression on the mind. For the style of 
expression is not simply the dress of the thought, — it is 
the embodiment, the incarnation of the thought ; as the 
discriminating Frenchman said, " the style is the man," so 
also it is true that the style is the thought : you can't sep- 
arate them any more than you can cut asunder the beating 
of the orator's heart from the sparkle of his eye and the 
flushing of his cheek. And so complete is this identifica- 
tion, that the common thought married to innnortal words, 
is apotheosized itself. A late critic on Demosthenes has 
suggested justly, that the reason why the prince of orators 
seems tame to us, as we read him, is, that we can not take 



334 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

in fully and feel tlie full association and metaphoric image 
wliicli each word conveyed to every Athenian whose ears 
tinffled as he stood in the ao;ora before him. To do that 
would demand an Athenian life and conversation. 

Warriors on the eve of the fight have spoken to the 
soldiery in words which have been in truth half-battles, 
and always for the orator the winged words of rhetoric 
will go far to win the day. The extraordinary affluence 
of diction which Mr. Choate possesses is draAvn from all 
the sources of literature and men's talk, common and un- 
common ; from the Bible and the newspapers, from some 
Homeric stanza, and from the chat of our streets ; from 
books, the peoj)le love, and books they never heard of ; 
simple words, long-legged words, all mixed up and stuck 
together like a bizarre mosaic, showing forth some splen- 
did story, in all its infinite variety of hues. 

Although oratory is one of the fine arts, and the prov- 
ince of a fine art is to 5''ield pleasure as an end, yet it is also 
a useful art, and therefore the beauty and vigor of language 
is only admirable in the orator when it conduces to the 
deeper and more intense impression of the thought upon 
the mind ; and judged by this standard, without reference 
to any arbitrary canons of taste, we think Mr. Choate's 
t^orc^-ammunition is a most legitimate, and useful, and 
telling charge for his oratorio artillery. 

They are not at all Jine words exclusively ; there is nothing 
of kid-glove dilettantism in his vocabulary ; he is not, like 
some speakers who scorn to deliver themselves in any but 
a sort of rose-colored rhetoric — afraid to take right hold of 
the huge paw of the Democracy by language coarse, and 
homely, and inelegant, but full of strength, and grit, and 
sense. Indeed, often you will see and hear in his jury ap- 
peals a classic gem of thought of rarest ray, set side by side 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 335 

with phrases smacking strongly of the very slang of the 
streets. But the talk of the day, though it may not excite 
men's wonder, comes home to their bosoms and busines; and 
through its road often the highest eloquence may move, as 
two thousand years ago the sage Socrates talked in the 
street before the Pnyx in Athens, to the common people 
who passed by ; illustrating by the commonest examples 
the profoundest philosophy. 

And in all Mr. Choate's language, whether common or 
uncommon, there is point, object, and meaning. No man 
can call his wild flights of metaphor an imagery — forcible- 
feeble, or rank his composition as belonging to the " spread 
eagle" school ; for in his wildest and most far-fetched ex- 
cursion for analogies, his flight soars from such a massive 
ground-work, that though the adversary smile, he must 
also shake ; just as the gala decorations of the heavy sides 
of a three-decker mantel in bright bunting her grim bat- 
teries ; but through flowers and through ribbons we see all 
the time those terrible cleath-deaKng, powder-stained muz- 
zles still there. 

There is never any calmness or sunplicity in his general 
composition. It is marked throughout by a character of 
apparently rather morbid mental exaggeration. We never 
see him, like the statesman, simply proposing and grandly 
inveighing or insisting ; but always, like the orator-advo- 
cate, idealizing every thing, and forcing it out of all its 
natural and just relations. His disposition produces some 
extraordinary neighborhoods among thoughts. Things that 
never before dared to lift their audacious heads hio-her 
than the sand, he sets at once side by side with the stars ; 
and if, notwithstanding his interfusing art, they seem as 
uncomfortable and ill-matched as some marriage unions 
of more corporeal creations, he breathes over them one 



336 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

burst of eloquent jmssion, and they settle down cosily to- 
gether. 

Over all his work a serio-comic cast is perceptible. 
His analogies and figures are sometimes designed to pro- 
duce mirth, and then he always " brings down the house ;" 
but even when not designed, there is often such a funny 
little vein of thought, dashed into some solemn and high- 
keyed concei>tion, like a woof of woolen shot "with silver or 
the black marble of Egypt veined with the yellow gold, 
that it provokes a quiet smile, as if some stage tragedy- 
king should crack a joke, or the sepulchral Hamlet should 
ffive one rib-shakino; laui^h. In a marine criminal case he 
had been making a lofty flourish, ushering in upon the 
stage of his thoughts like the motley cavalcades of a circus 
in one grand entree, Captain Parry and the English crown, 
eternal snow^s and the royal enterprise of a new empire, 
and Heaven knows what else ! in the most singular but 
striking juxtaposition, his whole manner dignified, fervent, 
and lofty in the extreme, — when suddenly he gave the 
oddest, wildest counter-stroke of sentiment w^e ever heard, 
even from him, by turning to a leading witness who had 
testified a^'ainst him, and who had said in cross-exannna- 
tion that he got some of his opinions from the policemen 
of the whaling city of New Bedford, — turning right to 
him, he brought down roars of laugiiter on his devoted 
head, and utterly demolished the weight of his evidence by 
shouting out the sarcastic and funny inquiry : " Pray, 
what opinions do the policemen of New Bedford hold on 
these things ? I wonder what the policemen of New Bed- 
ford think of the great, newly-discovered, tranquil sea, en- 
circlino- the North Pole !" 

But, while his eloquence of composition can not be 
called distinctively self-assured and statesmanlike, it is yet 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 337 

elevated and inspiring, from its appeals to the whole range 
of the grander and larger virtues ; to magnanimity and 
loftiness of soul. Often he will draw some heart-comfort- 
ing scene, which opens to us the paradise of youthful 
dreams where every noble and gallant virtue combines to 
set its seal, for the sole purpose, apparently, of raising the 
hearer's mind to tlie level of the appeal he is about to 
make to him in the name of vhtue and honor itself " I 
aj)peal to the manliness of a Boston juiy," he often ex- 
claims, and rarely in vain ; " I appeal to the manhood of 
a Massachusetts judge," he sometimes exclaims, with not 
universally the same propitious result. 

The whole movement and play of his mind in oratory 
seems large and free ; and the broadest generalizations of 
abstract truth fall from his lips ; maxims of the widest 
application, truths eternal and infinite, — maxims and 
aphorisms which Edmund Burke might have uttered in 
his hour of most philosophical frenzy. From these uni- 
versal principles and the higher order of intellectual con- 
siderations, the nobilities of mind, he will always reason 
whenever the subject tolerates such treatment. But 
though his style of rhetoric is as opulent in thought as it 
is oriental in diction, it does not seem so rich in thought 
and observation as it really is, from the very splendor of 
the words, — it has wisdom without parade ; the parade is 
wholly in the dress of the ideas. 

But, after all, we feel that the most general traits of 
his oratorio compositions are to be summed up and set 
down as an indescribable mixture of truth and reason, ex- 
travagance and intensity, beauty and pathos. Nothing is 
too wild, or flir-fetched, or intense for him to utter in Ids 
oratorical raptures. Similes and arguments, for which 

another man would almost be hooted out of court, he can 

15 



338 KEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

say with profound gravity and prodigious effect. And 
herein, as much as anywhere, he reveals his real, essential 
power ; for the force of his will and his intellectual passion 
is such, that he compels us in spite of ourselves to admire 
and sympathize with what in another man's mouth we 
might entirely condemn ; for when he seems utterly carried 
away himself by the rush and storm and glitter of passions 
and of pictures sweeping over his mind, we go with him in 
spite of ourselves ; then, no matter how trivial the subject 
or how humble the place, he abandons himself wholly to 
the mood, and so wonderful is his power of compelling 
sympathy, that he will at once lift that lowly theme into 
aerial proportions, cover it all over with the banners of 
beauty, and for a moment seem to make it fit for the con- 
templation of a universe, — and few will laugh, and all will 
wonder, and many tremble with delight. Once, in a cheap 
case, in a criminal court, when he wished to tell the jury 
that the circumstance that the defendant's assignee in 
insolvency paid but a small dividend, although the defend- 
ant had been a very wealthy man, Avas no evidence of fraud 
on his i)art (because an estate turned suddenly into cash, 
by an assignee indifferent to the interest of the owner, 
would Avaste and net nothing like its value), he contrived 
to liken the property melting away imder that assignee's 
manaofement, to tlie scattering: of a mamiificent miras-e 
under the noon-day heat ; and rising higher and higher in 
his mood, as he saw the twelve pair of eyes before him 
stretching wide, we well remember with what loud and 
pealing accents he swept in glory through the climax of 
his imagery and his argument, by this astonishing com- 
parison of the dry-goods man's bankruptcy : " So have I 
heard that the vast possessions of Alexander the conqueror 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 339 

crumbled away in dying dynasties, in the unequal liands 
of his weak heirs." 

And again, there are passages scattered all through his 
productions, of the most genuine and simple poetry and 
patlios ; as unforced and natural as the lines of the mar- 
velous child, who " ^vrote in numbers, for the numbers 
came ;" and blended with them there are other passages 
of fiery but pure poetry, conceptions which may challenge 
comparison with the most emphatic of even the flaming 
cantos distilled from the darkest midnight and the best 
gin by the fevered brain of Byron. All the poetry there is 
in anything, his genius will detect and grasp as surely as 
the divining-rod points to the golden stratum beneath the 
soil ; for in the education of his faculties he has been 
always loyal to the Muses, as well as faithful to the aus- 
terer claims of his acknowledged sovereign, the sage 
Themis ; and he may well be called the poet laureate of 
oratory. Nothing is too far off from fancy for him to de- 
tect its remote imaginative connections of thought ; Cow- 
per's Task poem on a Sofa is nothing to one of Choate's 
Taslc argtiments on a musty old deed. Indeed, we beheve 
he'd have poetry out of a broom-stick, if necessary. 

Like De Quincey, he idealizes every thing, throwing 
over common things that dreamy sentimentality which 
shows that they are the utterances of a mind full of asso- 
ciations unknown to any but the children of genius ; rais- 
ing thus the ordinary occurrence, the mere casuality, into 
the importance of an epic or the tragic grandeur of a fa- 
tality. And oftentimes the poetry and the passion mellow 
and blend in chaste beauty, and the pathos goes straight 
to the heart, tender and touching and tearful ; and then 
as he soars upward again on some sublime spirituality of 
sentiment, or lets his fancy riot in the full flood of rapt 



340 EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS C HO ATE. 

imaginings, the oratorical argument grows lyrical in its 
poetical colorings, over it a mystical and weird-like tinge 
is thrown, and the orator stands before us, like an Italian 
improvisatore, or the Homeric rhapsodist, telling the tale 
of " Troy divine" in the streets of the Athenian homes. 

The jjeroration of one of his arguments, as we now re- 
call it from memory, after an interval of some years, was 
an affecting illustration of the tender and beautiful traits 
of his speaking. It was an argument to a single judge, 
sitting without a jury, to hear a libel for divorce. Daniel 
Webster was on the other side, and he supported the hus- 
band's petition for a divorce, on the ground of the alleged 
wrong of the wife. Choate defended the wife, on the 
ground that the principal witness in the case was not to be 
believed, and that the wife was falsely accused by the hus- 
band, who perhaps was impatient of the matrimonial chain. 
He wound up a close and clamorous attack upon the wit- 
ness, who swore to certain imjn'oprieties of a young man 
with the lady, his client, by the vehement declaration that 
if this w^ere true, " that young man is the Alcihiades of 
America ;" this he uttered with impassioned energy, "fire 
in his eye and fury on his tongue ;" and then he made a 
full stop ; he looked into the stern, grand face of Web- 
ster ; he looked at the scowling husband and the tearful 
wife ; he looked at the solemn judge ; his eyes seemed to 
moisten with his thought ; and presently a grave, calm, 
and plaintive tone broke the deep stillness : "Whom God 
hath joined together, let no man put asunder. I beseech 
your Honor, put not away this woman from her wedded 
husband to whom she has been ever true, but keep them 
still togetlier, and erelong some of the dis})ensations of life, 
some death-bed repentance of a false witness, giving up her 
falsehood with her dying breath, some sickness, some ca- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 341 

lamity toucliing this husband's own heart, shall medicine 
his diseased mind, and give her back to happiness and love." 
The subduing gentleness and plaintive beauty of this ap- 
peal to the stern image of Justice, aptly personified in the 
single judge, sitting silent before him, was made more marked 
by the bold, strong way in which Webster, who instantly 
rose to reply, began his argument. For, conscious, appar- 
ently, of the strong sympathy which Choate had raised, he 
launched a heavy blow at this feeling at the outset. He 
oj)ened by a very powerful, but unpolished and inharmo- 
nious comparison of the husband's fate, if not divorced, to 
the punishment recorded in history of a dead and decaying 
body lashed for ever to the living and breathing form of 
the condemned criminal. The impassioned prayer of the 
wife's advocate, however, was destined to prevail. 

The rhythm of his composition we do not think is very 
noticeable. There is a marked rhythm in his delivery, and 
of that we shall speak when we discuss his manner ; but 
let any one, unacquainted with his ordinary way of speak- 
ing, read aloud a speech of his, and lie will perceive the 
want of any musical quality, such as constitutes Ihe rhythm 
of prose ; a rhythm not like that of poetry, uniform and 
monotonous, but ever-changing, and rising and fiiUing like 
the wild music of the wind-harps of the leafless trees in 
autumn, or the sobbing and shouting of the seas. 

His oratorio style, we think, shows for itself, that it is 
very much pre-written. And, indeed, the piles of paper 
behind which he rises to address a jury, and which disap- 
pear as he goes on, can not all be the notes of evidence in 
the case ; and the nice and close articulation of the mem- 
bers of his sentences, with the precise placing of words, — 
words not measured, but Jitted, to their places — make it 
certain that he subscribes to Lord Brougham's theory, that 



342 EEMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 

vajTueness and looseness and weakness of matter can only 
be prevented by the sjieaker's careful, previous-written 
composition. It is true that Choate often seems diffuse 
and wordy, but the ditfuseness is an exuberance of illus- 
trative idea, and words with different shades of meaning, 
or additions of ornament, not mere roundabout paraphrases 
to get at his idea the best way he can ; he strikes out his 
idea as sharp and clear as the head on a gold dollar, or a 
medallion of Louis Napoleon ; but, like that, it is embossed 
in relief, and laureled with imagery. And, on the whole, 
the matter of Ms speeches, so successful and striking, pre- 
sents a splendid and encouraging example of the union of 
general, liberal, and polite culture, with the close and au- 
stere elements of firmness and solidity, which only hard 
work can give, — hard work among books and hard work 
among men. 

Brougham's productions, some of them at least, have 
been called, " law -papers on fire ;" and in reading one of 
Choate's speeches, we catch the movement and velocity of 
a most fiery mind, evidently working with an Arab-like 
rapidity, and running faster and faster in its course, as it 
mounts its climax of thought ; rapid, close, short, hard- 
hitting questions, alternating with the pictures of fancy 
and the breathings of 2:)assion ; and, as in the midst of the 
ornament and the rapture, the iron links of the argument 
roll out and wind closer and closer, and the groundwork 
once established, is gone over with confirming and victori- 
ous emphasis again and agai-n ; the ideas crowd thick and 
strong on the mind, the sentences grow fuller of meaning, 
and the vigor and solidity of the whole fabric is, as if the 
lion's marrow of strength were poured into the dry bones 
of the skeleton argument. 

And now, having thus slightly analyzed Mr. Choate's 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 343 

intellectual enginery, by which he Avorks for his results, let 
us give a glance at him, as he sjieaks, and in full action. 
There are many orators who rely almost exclusively on 
their "action;" that is, their whole delivery, tones, ges- 
tures, manner, every thing ; while others rely mainly on 
their exhibitive and enforcing power of rhetoric ; and cer- 
tainly the modern pulpit reckons its brightest stars among 
those whose style of matter is a regular fancy arabesque. 
But the transcendent legitimate climax of oratorio jDower 
will never be attained by any mere excellence of matter ; 
it is in manner^ in the man. That terrible outburst of 
power, that incomprehensible deivorrjc, so awful, so irre- 
sistible, with which the prince of orators, in the most cele- 
brated speech yet spoken upon earth, tore " the crown" 
from the unwilling hand of iEschines and set it for ever 
on his own forehead, was no grace of matter, but a tre- 
mendous, agonistic style of passion and of energy in the 
manner, the delivery, the man. 

Now, in their manner, some" men of note are almost 
exclusively energetic and forcible ; they speak with nerves 
strung, with nuisclcs braced, and tlie whole frame erect 
and energized. But, usually, these are unmelodious and 
somewhat harsh in speaking, though effective. Lord 
Brougham is such a speaker, and many others whom 
we could name, not quite so far off. Others, again, are 
chiefly pathetic, and graceful, and harmonious speakers, 
speaking in rather a conversational way, and with a grate- 
ful cadence. Kossuth is, Ave think, to be thus considered, 
and also our own Wendell Phillips. Either of these men 
can speak two or three hours to an audience, without 
wearying them ; and if fully aroused, they would make 
one feel that it was worth walking a good many miles to 
hear them ; but the declaimers of the merely energetic 



344 REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 

school split men's ears, and tire them out in three quarters 
of an hour. But the subject of this sketch seems to us to 
possess many of the capital excellences of both these classes. 
In his oratory there is a vehemence and a rapidity of utter- 
ance perfectly overpowering, and yet a musical flow and 
tone, a modulation and cadence, a pathos and sweetness of 
inflection, which gives him the power to storm our souls 
Avithout stunning our ears. There is nothing (in his de- 
livery) like the drum-beat rolls of Father Gavazzi's intona- 
tions, pointing with fury to the red cross upon his breast, 
and launching the thunder of his passion at the head of 
Kome ; nothing of the hill-side stormings of Daniel O'Con- 
nell before his monster meetings, denouncing England ; but 
there is tremendous vehemence, nevertheless, which makes 
itself felt chiefly in the rapid rate of his utterance, and in 
the emphatic stress of the important word in his sentences; 
while all the rest, the less important words and the ca- 
dences by wdiich, as it were, he dismounts and comes down 
from his lofty heights of shouting emphasis, run along rich, 
soft, and low, sinking, if any thing, even too far down to- 
ward the inaudible. Frequently he produces a very bold 
effect, by a fierce head-shattering emphasis, and then drop- 
ping right down instantly to the simplest colloquialism. 

He does not, however, speak in the conversational way. 
It used to be said of Harrison Gray Otis, that wdien you 
met him in State street, and heard liim talk about prop- 
erty, you heard the orator Otis almost as much as if he 
were in Faneuil Hall, talking about politics. But nobody 
could imagine, from talking with Rufus Choate, that they 
had heard the orator Choate. His delivery is the most 
rapid and sustained and emphatic which we have ever 
heard, except from the great temperance advocate, Gough; 
Avliile it has a musical flow and rhythm and cadence, more 



REMIKISCENCES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 345 

like a long and rising and swelling song, than a taJh, or an 
argument. Indeed, his rhythm is so marked, that on- first 
hearing him it seems a little like sing-song, Lut this im- 
pression soon wears off, and gives way to a pleasing sensa- 
tion of relief, which otherwise his vehemence miglit pre- 
vent. Not i)0ssessing that liquid melody of tone, which 
in the common accent of agreeable conversation seizes and 
fills the ear ; not sjjcaking, indeed, in any degree in the 
conversational key, which, when well done, will by its va- 
riety of inflection, by its ever-changing rhythm and natur- 
alness, hold the hearer enchained for a long time ; he relies 
on this extremely nimble and feverish style of utterance, to 
seize the hearer's mind, and keep him running along with 
him at a top-speed, till either he chooses to let go, or the 
auditor, entirely exhausted though not disenchanted, drops 
off himself This style is fatiguing to listen to in a speaker, 
although iascinating Avhen habit or genius makes it natural; 
})ecause one's nerves and faculties get strung and driven on 
to such a degree from involuntary symjjathy witli the 
speaker, that the hearer is almost equally exhausted when 
the peroration comes as the performer himself 

Henry Clay, in a great speech, would move on through 
the oratorio voyage, as gracefully as a great ship, whose 
snowy plumage ruiHes and shivers in various breezes, 
stormy and placid by turns, but whose movement is 
always majestic, serene, and swanlike o'er the sea ; but 
Choate is a steam-propeller, on the high-pressure princi- 
ple — rushing and spattering and foaming and tearing 
ahead at a dead rate all the way. His melody is one 
steady tune all the time ; its modulations and intona- 
tions diversified and distinct, but all servient to one 
dominant principle of melody, whose general character is 
permanently stamped on all he utters ; even like " the 

15* 



346 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

multitudinous laughter" of the waves, mingling with 
crashing breakers and sobbing billows, but all" subordi- 
nate to, and linally lost in, the one great ocean diapa- 
son — the grand, majestic music of the sea. Somewhat 
in the same way, at least as far as regards unbroken ve- 
locity, William Pinkney spoke — the most brilliant legal 
speaker, before Choate, in this country, to whom Benton, 
in his " Thirty Years in the Senate," attributes the great- 
est contemporary repute of eloquence in America. In the 
first moments of his speech he did not win, but rather re- 
pulsed you ; but gathering headway, he gained more and 
more uj)on you, till soon he took the helm of your mind 
and led you hither and thither as the frenzy and the mood 
swept over him. And precisely the same thing we have 
heai'd said of Mr. Choate, by a great and experienced au- 
thority ; for the eminent critic declared that he listened to 
Choate's Webster speech in Faneuil Hall, at first with dis- 
like and then with indifference, but soon with delight ; till 
presently the orator got full command of him, and for the 
moment swept him wherever he would. 

Although this railroad rapidity of movement in his 
elocution conduces thus to his general effect, and as a whole, 
perhaps, gets fuller command of an audience, yet it cer- 
tainly very much weakens the effect of particular passages. 
We have heard the most affecting and illustrative periods 
rattled off by him so as to call no particular attention to 
them ; a mere dropping fire of distant musketry, when they 
should have been delivered with all the deliberateness, pre- 
cision, and emphasis of minute-guns. Grattan tells us he 
heard Lord Chatham speak in the House of Lords ; and it 
was just like talking to one man by the button-hole, except 
when he lifted himself in enthusiasm, and then the effect 
of the outbreak was immense. But Choate is q^from the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 347 

word " Go !" and is all along on tlie higli r<;)pes, and bound- 
ing up like a full-blooded racer all the time ; consequently, 
the effect of all the higher passages is damaged, the Avhole 
is so high ; we can not have mountains unless we have val- 
leys. 

He throws the same fiery enthusiasm into every thing 
— a great case or a little one — a great speech or a common 
occasion. The client Avho retains this great advocate may 
always be assured that he gets the whole of him ; blood, 
brains, every thing — his inspiration and his jDcrspiration — all 
are fully given to him. And in managing his oratorio artil- 
lery he shows great tact and skill, I'ur his reputation as a 
master of eloquent whirlwinds is sucli, and a jury are so 
often cautioned on this account by the op[)osing counsel to 
keep a sharp lookout for him, that it is often necessary to 
approach his hearer's mind with unpretending simplicity, 
to dissipate his fears a little and get liim under way gently, 
before he can be whirled into the vortex. We once heard 
a lawyer who had often heard Choate speak, declare that 
the finest exhibition of eloquence he ever heard from him 
was in a little country office, before a judge of probate, 
upon the proving of a will. It was a winter morning, and 
the judge sat before the fire with his feet up in the most 
careless manner. He evidently had a great contempt for 
oratory as applied to law, and was quite resolved to have 
none of it ; so turning up his head as he saw the counsel 
for the heir looking at a pile of notes, he said, in the most 
indifferent way, " If you've any objections to make, Mr. 
Choate, jus.t state •th.^ra now." (The idea of asking Eufus 
Choate to "just state" any thing !) Choate began in the 
most tame manner he could assume, by running over a fnv 
dry legal saws and some musty and absurd principles of 
law, govoining wills. The old judge lx3gan to piick u]>liis 



348 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C II GATE. 

ears ; soon the argument advanced from a mere legal prin- 
ciple to a trifling but telling illustration of it, couched, 
however, as far as possible, in legal phraseology ; the judge 
gave more attention, and the advocate enforced the illustra- 
tion by a very energetic argument, but not yet flowery ; 
and speedily the judge's legs came down one after the other, 
his body turned round, and his eyes were fixed on the 
speaker ; and at last, as he rose into his congenial and 
unfettered field of argument, and pictured with flaming 
passion the consequences to the whole domestic and social 
state of New Eu'dand, if the construction for which he 
contended should not be applied to the wills of the farmers 
of New England, the judge fairly nodded in admiring ac- 
quiescence, and the unequaled. advocate carried the case and 
the tribunal at the point of the bayonet. 

The vanquished judge was only in the same predica- 
ment with many an obdurate jury. Throughout the whole 
of a jury argument, you see tlie resolute, unflagging icill 
working on the twelve men. AVhen he woos and persuades, 
or when, with more determination, he seems to say, " you 
shall believe it," at all times alike, by look, by expression 
of face, by every thing, he seems to say first — " do believe it, 
but if you won't, you shall believe it." We saw him once 
wiilk right uj) to a juror who sat on the front seat of the 
jury-box, looking doggedly incredulous — right up close to 
him he walked, and bringing down his clenched fist almost 
in his very eyes, " Sir," said he, " give me your attention, 
and I pledge myself to make this point ivliolly clear to you." 
The poor man looked more crest-fallen and criminal than 
the accused prisoner ; he opened his eyes and his ears too ; 
one after another the fortifications in which he had in- 
trenched his resolution for " a verdict against Clioate," 
went slambang by the board under the resistless forensic 



K E ?,I I N I S C E N C E S OF 11 U F U S C H A T E . 349 

cannonading, and a verdict for defendant sealed the success 
of that daring; declamation. 

He rarely, however, uses invective or the fiercer and 
more grand styles of controversy ; hut through all he 
rather coaxes and leads and lulls, occasionally only aston- 
ishing and compelling assent by thundering bravuras of 
oratory. A tender and melancholy strain pervades his 
utterances, like the air of a song whose thoughts we take 
in witli our mind, but whose feeling floats into our hearts 
on the gentle nuisic which accompanies the words, running 
through melodious variations to a lovincr and sorrowino; 
cadence. And often when his glances and tones show him to 
be "in a fine frenzy rolling," suddenly, as if some soft south 
wind of association and emotion stole over him, he will sink 
on to the soft pedal of his vocal instrument, and a little 
ejjisode of delicate and sad fancies will shoot into the coarse 
web of his argument, dro])ping as gently from his li])s as 
dew upon the flowers. No matter how vehemently he lifts 
his voice, no matter if in the frenzy of passion he breaks 
out in some mad and almost bedlamitish shout, he will 
speedily sink into the lap of a cadence mournfully beauti- 
ful, falling upon the half-shocked ear as west winds on the 
half crushed rose buds. In the speech to which we have be- 
fore referred, wdiere he pictured the mourning of Mexico, in 
the funeral songs of her dark daughters, chanting, "Ah, 
woe is me, Alhama, for a thousand years !" the accents 
runo; and moaned throudi that old Faneuil Hall, like the 
lamenting wail of a banished harpist, sweeping the chords of 
his country's memory. So universal and so mournful is the 
pathetic element of his delivery that it would require no 
very wild flight of romance to fancy Calliope herself, the 
Muse of Eloquence, mingling for ever with the tones of 



350 REMINISCENCES OF HUE US CHOATE. 

her most favored cliild her own laments for her "lost art" 
of perfect oratory. 

Mr. Choate's " action," as far as bodily gesture and 
presence are concerned, does not materially aid his elo- 
quence. Some orators' pantomime is the perfect painting 
of their thoughts ; in the prophetic expression glancing 
o'er their face like the shadows on a summer's sea ; in the 
discriminating gesture, each one telling its own story with 
j)ei"fect honesty ; in the bodily bendings, appealing or en- 
forcing, the whole story is told. As the man said who was 
somewhat deaf, and could not get near to Clay in one of 
his finest efforts, " I didn't hear a word he said, but, great 
Jehovah ! didn't he make the motions !" But in Cheate, 
the deaf man looking at him would see a gesture compara- 
tively uniform, and chiefly expressive only of degrees of en- 
ergy, and a countenance mainly indicative of only more or 
less intensity of nervous passion. His countenance is by 
no means the looking glass of his soul. It is too sallow 
and bilious ; the deepest shadows alone are visible on its 
dark disk. 

He has, however, one extraordinary instrument of 
gesture, rarely, if ever used before, and that is his legs. 
For it is a frequent resort of his, by way of emphasis, to 
spring up, by bracing all his muscles, and settle himself 
down again on his heels, with a force which often actually 
shakes the whole court room. 

His voice is rich and deep, not resonant and metallic — 
a qu'ility which all out-of-door speakers must have — but 
rather woody and deficient in " timbre." In dress, he looks 
as if his clothes had been flung at his body and stuck there. 
His cravat is a type of his whole costume ; tliat was once 
well said " to meet in an indescribable tie, which seems like 
a fortuitous concurrence of original atoms." 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS OHOATE. 351 

With many orators, the spring of the neck from the 
shouklers gives a great characteristic effect of manner to 
the throwing out of their words. Webster's massive neck, 
springing from his shoulders like the solid oak, enforced 
every emphasis. Chatham's lofty look was greatly due to 
the set of his head ; and of Kachel, the tragedienne, it is 
said that a certain harmonious distance between her well- 
formed ear and her shoulders lends great effect to her cor- 
rect gesticulation and her dignified attitudes. . But Choate 
has hardly any elements of figure or person peculiarly favor- 
able to oratory, except liis eyes ; they send forth lightnings, 
and sparkle and burn like a fire-eyed worshiper of the East. 
It is rather in sjjite of his physique, in spite of nature and 
his stars, as Pinkney said of Fox, that he is a first-class 
orator. 

And we think, with profound deference to so great an 
authority, that he rather makes a mistake in neglecting 
action, and relying too exclusively on mere vehemence and 
weight of ear-filling words and ear-catching thou^-hts ; for, 
after all, for the mass of mankind, action, not composition, 
is the thing — oratory, not rhetoric. The brilliant uniforms 
of the sunshine soldiery will do for a dress-parade, but they 
are in the way in battle ; for Imsiness, for profit, for victory, 
we want the old gray coats, and no wadding but the solid 
bone and muscle in them. And if Demosthenes were to 
rise from his ashes in the urn to-day, he could never say a 
better thing than he did when thrice he answered the thrice- 
asked question. What is the essence of oratory ? " Action, 
action, action !" By action, he meant no mere school of 
gesture, but every bodily element of expression of thought 
— the vocality, the passion, the whole movement. 

But we must finish our picture, feeling, after all, great 
disappointment tliat we can give no better idea of this 



352 PvEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CIIOATE. 

strange and incom2)reliensible orator. He can not be da- 
guerreotyped, he can only be hinted at ; and as we have 
heard a painter say of a provokingiy elusive face, you must 
make a memorandum of the countenance, and let fancy do 
the rest. The faint idea which a literally exact speech re- 
ported would give can not be had, for no rej)orter can follow 
him ; and after a speech he can not tell what he said. There 
are his copious notes, to be sure, at your service, which lie 
can't read, and the man has yet to be born of woman who 
can. 

There have been moments when, in speaking for the 
life of a man, he rose above himself, his head grew classic 
and commanding, his form towered up into heroic impres- 
siveness, and then, indeed, he grasped the thunderbolt ; 
for then it was given him faintly to shadow forth that con- 
summate eloquence, the dream and the ideal of antiquity ; 
the unapproached combination of logic and learning, and 
poetry and passion, and music and action, all in one flash- 
ing cloud, rolling electric over men — the most imposing 
form of power which God has ever given into the hands of 
men. 

Other jury advocates may surpass him in single points ; 
but take him for all and all, we think he bring-s more varied 
and higher qualities, more intellectual weight of metal to 
the Bar, than any man of our time who has made legal 
advocacy the almost exclusive theater of his energies and 
his fame. Erskine may have had more simple grace of dic- 
tion, and a more quiet and natural passion ; Curran may 
have had an equally impassionate but more unstudied rush 
of fervor, in his Celtic raptures ; Ogden Hoffman may be 
more naturally melodious in his rhythm, suggesting more 
vividly the fable of him who had a nest of singing birds in 
his throat ; and possibly Pinkney may have had a harder 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 353 

legal head, for laying the foundations of his legal rhetoric ; 
hut when we consider that he adds to so many forensic 
arts such wide-varying intellectual accomphshment — al- 
most satisfying Cicero's magnificent myth of him who 
should make himself the most illustrious of orators, by first 
being the foremost man in every branch of learning which 
men could talk about — then we unhesitatingly rank him 
the first orator, as well as most formidable advocate, who 
now, in any quarter of the globe where the English lan- 
guage is spoken, is ever seen standing before the jury 
panel. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FORENSIC ARGUMENTS. 

Mr. Choate's arguments before the Jury and to the 
Judges in banc, as also before Legislative committees, Ref- 
erees, etc., are, so far as they have been preserved, the su- 
preme monuments of his genius. Unfortunately, however, 
comparatively few of them have ever been preserved. In 
his later years, stenography had so far advanced as an art, 
that it became possible to report him ; but before that, no 
reporter could keep pace with the fiery velocity of his 
thought and utterance. 

Many of the following arguments, and passages from 
arguments of his, were written down at the time of their 
delivery, by myself, or some other member of the Bar, who 
sat by in the court room ; I doubt if they were preserved 
or exist in any other form. A few of them are from steno- 
graphic reports. 

Mr. Choate's popular and political speeches were 
generally fully reported, and often, revised by him. 
It is expected that they will appear in appropriate Vol- 
umes, published for his family. 

But his Jury appeals are mostly preserved only in loose 
MS., and can be found nowhere else than here. Tliose I 
took down myself and those which others thus took down, 
I give here, that they may stand some chance of j^reserva- 
tion in the tangible and permanent shape of print. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 355 
THE EASTMAN AND FONDET CASE. 

The first case of his of which I have any recollection, 
was one where a firm, Messrs. Eastman & Fondey, were 
indicted {or fraud, in tlieir mercantile transactions. They 
alleged themselves wholly insolvent. 

The case was tried in the Municipal Court in Suffolk, 
at the September term, 1845, Judge Gushing presiding. 

After the government had put in their case, Mr. Choate 
opened for the defendants. The following sentences from 
his address were taken down at the moment : 

Shall it ever be said that two merchants whose integrity 
up to the day of their arrest was not even suspected, whose 
honor up to the last falling sands of this hour has not been 
stained by the first breath of evidence adduced by the pros- 
ecuting officer, whose transcendent power in feiTeting out 
evidence and whose untiring vigilance leaves no stone un- 
turned : shall it be said that such men are in danger, or 
that harm can disturb a hair of their head, when, showing 
a clear breast, they place all of life that is worth living for, 
in the hands and at the disposal of a jury of Suffolk ? No, 
not a word ! not one word ! not a word ! Justice will be 
meted out considerately, wisely, justly ; and men in every 
station will be entitled to the benefit of that benign and 
felicitous provision which we are all pleased to recognize 
and apply to the stranger, alien, brother, friend or foe — the 
presumption of the law that the defendant is innocent. It 
stands beside my client throughout this day's trial like a 
guardian angel, and cheers him mid the peril of this hour. 
I would cease this speech right here if I deemed it necessary 
or proper, and challenge my brother to put his finger on 
one scintilla of evidence pointing to the grave charge in his 
manifesto. Fraud, fraud, my brother says. Where is it ? 



356 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Where ? Fraud, gentlemen, is a harsli word ; but let us 
find it first. The cry of wolf when there is no wolf, mad 
dog, and a thousand other things, may set the police astir; 
hut who shall protect the stricken deer whom the herd hath 
left far behind ? 

Have we not all felt, and d id we not all share the shock 
which the great storm of insolvency gave to the commer- 
cial world? The strongest trembled like reeds in the blast; 
but did we cry fraud, as if all men had been by magic 
made villains ? Is unsuccess criminal ? If so the mar- 
iner, merchant, poet, philosopher, mechanic, aye, the apple 
iuo7nan at the corner of the street, all are criminals, for 
all have failed to succeed. Their boldest conceptions, purest 
dreams, fairest hopes, have not resulted in the real; still we 
would not be eager, from kindness of heart, to accuse, de- 
nounce, or brand their deeds, by cruel speech, as a bald 
fraud. It may have been a brilliant failure, but a bald 
fraud — never, never. 

Few lessons of experience are sweet. Life hath its 
bubbles as the ocean hath ; circumstances hurry us madly 
along, whither we know not, nor for what haven. Many 
a merchant has retired full of hope, and risen tt> look upon 
a wreck of his fortune. What says the police officer, the 
alderman with good capon lined ? Fraud — a thousand 
frauds, phoenix-like, leap up to feast the depraved ear, cul- 
tured to foul reports, dealt out by busy-tongued slander. 

Defeat and unsuccess may be honorable, if honesty 
guide the victim ; and success may stain the good name of 
the best of us all if attained by criminal means ; then, gen- 
tlemen, go with me to the evidence ; and if you see fraud, 
it will be your duty to convict ; if not, your pleasure and 
duty to acquit. 

When Mr. Choate had concluded his opening to the 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 357 

jury, ho i;rocccded to put in his case, and his witnesses 
were called. After his evidence was all in, he addressed 
the juiy, closing for his client. The following are extracts 
taken down from his lijDS : 

Gentlemen of the jury, I have no anxiety in submitting 
the cause of my clients to your unbiassed deliberation, for 
I too well know tlie candor and unbending integrity of a 
juiy of Suffolk, to feel any hesitancy or reluctance in plac- 
ing all that is dear and worth living for in their hands and 
at their disposal. I need not enforce the importance of a 
good name in a mercantile community like ours. I should 
censure myself if I should indulge in any illustration or 
much speech upon a theme familiar to you as the primer 
of your boyhood. 

Speaking of their Arrest. — They had returned to their 
homes, to inhale a breath from the atmosphere freed from 
the noise and din of busy life, cares hanging like a portent- 
ous cloud over their hearts ; their fortunes had taken unto 
themselves wings, and were scattered like forest leaves 
chased by the winds ; they were found by Mr. King in 
tears. Yes, gentlemen, on that flital Friday night, hope 
went out in their bosoms like a farthing candle at daylight; 
and they Avere dragged by the sheriff to wear away the 
Avatches of the nisht in a felon's cell. 



Speaking of 3Ir. Fondeifs Honesty. — Do Ave not tear 
our hearts from our bosoms, and wear them on our sleeves, 
that you may see that their pulsations are honest and their 
beatino;s true ? 

Without temporary loss of character, often wdren a sol- 
dier is run through Avith the bayonet, and sunk doAvn mid 
the dead and dying, God in his mercy raises him up and 



358 EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

crowns liim with the laurels of fame, and rests upon it the 
mantle of honor. 

The law, as it were, plucks the arrow from the stricken 
deer which the common herd hath left far behind. 

Creditors open the Desk of Eastmaii & Co. — Their desk 
was broken open, and their papers read, which were as 
sacred to them as the letters of their courtship. 

Speaking of the Firm' s paying Usury ^ lohich the Gover7i- 
ment argued tvas stro7ig evidence of their intention to de- 
fraud. — Is it possible to think rationally, that if a person 
was going to plunge into a cataract below the precipice, 
he would be over careful not to moisten his feet with dew ? 
It is sheer nonsense — senseless talk ; not a schoolboy in 
Massachusetts would waste a breath over such twaddle. It 
was no rashness like a sailor resorting to the spirit room, 
to intoxicate his system that he might go down with the 
ship without a groan, without a bubble. But an effort by 
strong men to escape the great storm of insolvency which 
had or would soon overtake them; they all unconscious of 
its stealthy and deathly approach. 

Speaking of a Witness, he said — His memory is playing 
tricks with him ; his feelings are running a race with his 
intellect. 

Speaking of the Story of a Witness as being false, he 
said — The story is as unlike the truth as a pebble is unlike 
a star — a witch's broom-stick like a banner-staff. 



CASE OF ALLEGED FRAUD IN AN INSOLVENT DEBTOR. 

The following is a case in which the names of the parties 
are unknown to me ; and the extracts of the argument are 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 359 

somewhat incoherent, although the general character of 
the issue is j)lain. The broken and abrupt extracts, how- 
ever, will serve to illustrate Mr. Choate's way of bursting- 
out in the course of an argument with sudden exclamations 
and surprising conceits. 

The trial was in the Court of Common Pleas, Judsre 
Washburn on the Bench. It was a case of alleged fraud 
in an insolvent debtor, and the plaintiff charged in four 
specifications, to wit : 

1st. That since the debt was contracted the defendant 
has secured his property for his oivn use. 

2d. That when he purchased the goods he intended to 
defraud his creditors. 

3d Charge relates to the property in the boxes and the 
mortgaged j^roperty conveyed to his father. 

4th. That at a particular time he discharged a debt 
against his father, and often had notes of his father's in 
order to cheat his creditors. Mr. Choate was for the 
plaintiff. 

He said; — Gentlemen of the jury, this is a case of some 
considerable importance, yet when we look into it we shall 
see it is overrated. Every case which involves the princij^le 
of debt and credit is important. Lives there a man in 
Suffolk who has no sympathy with the criminal ? 

We rely uj)on the humane and temperate justice of 
the law. 

Imprisonment for debt, thank God, is blotted from the 
statutes 

The Court will proceed with a wisdom we shall all ap- 
preciate ; and we, in our judicial capacity, shall administer 
justice and the law with lenity and care. 



360 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

We said that the defendant has been fervent to the 
faith and credit that set him on his journey for life ; but 
this calamity came upon him, and he had not virtue 
enough to resist the temptation. 

A most remarkable attack has been made upon the 
credibility of one v^itness, whose evidence is fair as the 
morning star. 

In considering the next fact, it becomes us to throw off 
our manly sympathy and erect ourselves for the dignity of 
the law. 

It is the second day of his extremity, the night of his 
sorrow, the storm which will shipwreck his golden hopes. 

We say he took three hundred and thirty-one dollars — 
of West India goods, as my learned brother calls them — 
consisting of shovels, hoes, and other hardware, delivering 
it to his parent — a too j^arental hand. 

He fjiiled ; but seventy-five per cent, comes like dew 
upon the parched flower, to quench the thirst of the care- 
worn creditor ; and bids him sit down in the security of 
peace. I am almost ready to ask the judicial indignation 
of you, Grentlemen of the jury. 

It is the most bald, the most shocking fraud, with 
which our mercantile community have been startled from 
their sleep since that first primeval morn when the honest 
Pilgrim first left his honest footstep upon the sands of our 
glorious New England. 

We are not to reason here upon the calamity of the 
general chances of trade — this man does a snug business — 
trusts next to nobody — what his expenses were you are to 
judge — that he did not spread himself upon the sea of ex- 
travagance, and buffet this strong cuiTcnt. 



EEMIXISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 361 

The father of the defendant comes here with more than 
the feelings of a father — he comes here to wash his hands 
of the same crime which his son is charged with. Ohl ag-e 
shows not the frosts of disappointment ; it wilts not when 
accusation is brought against it ; but a young man is 
blasted if a black spot is stamj)ed ujjon his reputation. 

I do not know why I should not stop here, and hang up 
before you the black chart of his whole career, and let you 
judge of his motives — his red acts of crime — or his over- 
strained honesty in paying his creditors. 

Every line, every assertion, every representation, wears 
U})on the face of it deception, dishonesty; — the blackest 
fraud that ink can mar the purest sheet of paper with. 

Nobody knows any thing about these losses, he says he 
has experienced; and it is a most painful truth that all these 
things are carried out in the most minute detail to cheat 
the persons who extended the patronage to him — his pil- 
lars in trade and his victims, to prey uj^on them ; and 
then he cries out, " Trade is hazardous." But his trade 
was a safe one. It was no shaking of dice or hazard ; it 
was a sure game, and he pocketed the stakes before he 
won — forsaking even the motto, " Honesty among thieves." 

That wallet in which the notes were, haunts me ; I go 
for the wallet ; which is a trashy thing at best, but in this 
case contains the jewel which we are warring for — " The 
wallet is the thing \" 

It was no raw experiment, but one full of craft and low 
intrigue. 

Was it true that he stood upon this fearful chasm and 
trembled not ; but firmly told his tale of flattery, and 

10 



362 REMINISCENCES OFRUFUS CHOATE. 

o-ained the credit to the amount of forty-one hundred 
dollars ? 

It was a dreadful lie ! and he shadows forth from his 
dark heart the intent to defraud — he knew the men whom 
he was to buy off — he stole their confidence ; a rich treasure. 

It is never unseasonable to bring to the Court the fact 
that a witness always tells the truth — it does not set the 
foul stigma of perjury upon his heart. 

Try witnesses not by caprice, but by the legal standard 
— else the law is a laggard — else you hazard your homes ; 
his father testifies ; we know he would save his son at the 
price of his blood — his own right hand would be a small 
sacrifice for him. Trouble is in the camp. But the young 
life is not to be worn out in the jail, even if convicted of 
this fraud ; but that wallet is to be unclasped and the con- 
tents scattered to his fainting creditors — not fainting, but 
honest men who have toiled, and won the rewards of labor. 

I appeal to his Honor, who is to sum up the ardor of 
this debate, if the father could be charged with perjury, or 
at least be held as criminal, if, to save his son, he has not 
sworn the truth before us. 

An empty bag can't stand up ; l)ut look at the power, 
the veracity, the spirit, memory, soul he has ; but he has 
also an infirm virtue which has lost its luster. 

I am sorry to cause any uneasiness on your part, though 
the trial is lengthy — for this is an important case, and re- 
quires a careful attention, and will, I trust, lead to a just 
verdict. 

The association is good for minds blunted with age j 
may it please your Honor — experience teaches this. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 363 

AVlieii that miserable ceremony was enacted, the note 
was mutilated, and cast upon the floor. The new note was 
in the wallet of the young man, tied up closely — chained 
with white tape, a countiyman's tape. And then the de- 
fendant takes the Poor Debtor's oath, under those circum- 
stances. 

Is there any color or pretense that the law of Imprison- 
ment for debt, which has been abolished, is to take effect 
in this trial ? God forbid such an outrage. 

The universal business morality is debauched by an ac- 
quittal of this man under the present state of the evidence. 

He is quick, keen, knows when to hold his tongue, with 
the cunning of a bushy-tailed fox — all's right. It's the 
Jack Robinson game ; presto, change — money under the 
cup ; shallow philosophy ! 

You, gentlemen, sitting here upon your oaths, the good 
men of your county, the sagacity of Suffolk, the nerves of 
the law — ^if you can conceive that black is white, you can 
reconcile these acts as innocent ones. No, gentlemen, the 
Evil One ivas in the wind, and he blew the dust the wrong 
way ! We have tracked them — we have treed them ; and 
now they look down-spirited. Well they might, with such 
a sin upon their hands, and the frown of offended Heaven 
resting upon them ! 

Where is the blank book ? Where is the wallet ? 
Echo answers, " Where ?" 

There they sit, folding up their arms, with the same 
perpendicular position as their counsel, both mentally and 
physically. 



364 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Where is the blank book ? "I looked," said Falstatf, 
" and sent for a dozen yards of taffeta, and to my surprise 
they sent me security." This is a parallel case. 

The defendant's case breaks down — it's dead — down 
under the last leaf of the blank book where the 412 is ; 
that last leaf is the epitaph of the case ! It is their tomb- 
stone ! 

We see him shoving out to the tune of twenty-seven 
hundred dollars. God forgive us when we complain* of too 
much light from his bounteous hand. This is the situa- 
tion in which we are placed. 

It is not a fiddle- stick's importance liow many notes 
there were. 

With the oath of God upon his conscience, his father's 
notes on hand, he feels safe, secure ; dreadful, shallow, 
wicked, up to the very length of his dwarfish height. 

You are the judges of this case, and I'm glad you are ; 
and if you have the least doubt as to the design of this 
man, you will give an acquittal. If not, you will convict 
him of the fraud. 

John Small, the witness, sits in court, spectacles on 
nose, and was summoned last evening ; and, upon exami- 
nation, we are led to think that he grew blind, not reading 
his Bible, but some base fiction, wliich has led him in the 
wrong path for tliis once. 

CASE ON SUNDAY LAWS. 

The next argument of wliich I have any extracts was 
an indictment found against a defendant for violation of 
the Sunday laws, which in Massachusetts were very strin- 
gent. Mr. Choate went back to the origin of the Sun- 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 365 

day legislation, and the general religious ordinances of the 
Massachusetts colony. He showed how severe the early 
ideas were, and the absurdities that would result if those 
provisions which still remained were literally and not liber- 
ally enforced. In reference to the construction of the par- 
ticular statute under consideration, he said : 

We have annihilated the bigotry and mysticism wdiich 
blinded our fathers. There has been a continued revolu- 
tion going on in tlie laws ever since the public mind gave 
them birth, and an enlarged view of morals has ob- 
tained. 

Showing the practical inconsistency which prevailed in 
the enforcement of this class of laws, he said : 

The Massachusetts commonwealth which is embodied 
in the Attorney General — this Massachusetts common- 
wealth has her great Western Eailroad, and she comes 
thundering and rattling into our city, and her passengers 
come, and the hacks go and bring them home, hut no one 
is ar7^ested ; the steamer arrives, the flags are raised, the 
post office opened, the citizens running to get the lastest 
news, if flour has risen, cotton fallen — and no one is ar- 
rested ; Marshal Gibbs is not on the wharf to see if a 
merchant goes into his counting-house, takes his papers, 
sets his ship adrift ; he does not come u}) here and get out 
an indictment against our merchant. "Oh, ye hypocrites I 
strainincr at a irnat, and swallowing; — a steamer." You 
gentlemen, will swallow no such thing ! 

Again he said : The fears and imaginations of that gen- 
eration were vain as air. They thought unless law urges 
men to the support of religion, some strumpet Avill be 
dressed up as the Goddess of Eeason, and Bostoniuns will 
fall down and worship her. 

Mr. Choate was very fond of Patent causes. He took a 



3(36 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

vast interest in invention. A case where he defended the 
new adajDtation of a machine for making and winding 
thread, gave him occasion for mucli brilliant apostrophe 
and allusion. His national allusions, in the following ex- 
cerpts, are very striking. The extracts are fragmentary, 
but intelligible : 

PATENT CASE OF THREAD-MACHINE. 

The case was opened to the jury by the senior counsel, 
Mr. Choate. He said : — In the great singularity of this 
case, I shall confine my attention to the facts. 

This suit is, indeed, a singular affair ; no instance of a 
like character ever has occurred in this country before — or 
under the American heavens. 

The productions of the most gifted minds in England 
have been adapted to our own benefit when it was deemed 
necessary. Time out of mind, time immemorial, like a 
universal custom, it has been repeated. It has been the 
custom in France, and nearer to us ; and the moral right 
has never been questioned. 

The family of nations have recognized the practice, and 
it is the law of nations. 

In cutlery, needles, pins, cigars, drugs, imitations have 
been made which bring the great and grand originals into 
public notoriety. 

The manner and taste, the {esthetics, have been a studied 
branch, and engravers have kept them on hand for sale ; 
they do it with alacrity ; the configuration is got up by 
others — from these the architect borrows his designs as a 
matter of taste. 

They have gone on and made this thread, so far as the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 367 

earthly fluctuation would not interfere with their busi- 
ness. 

The notion has been spread in community that mis- 
chief was going on ; this was by agents. A bitter coni- 
l)kxint was entered against the defendant, under these 
singuhxr and novel circumstances. 

Mr. Carpenter, the defendant, being so little fond of 
law suits that he ])aid the fine, with the expectation of 
never being again troubled ; they gave encouragement to 
that eiFect. It was the only inducement for such a set- 
tlement. 

The law is recognized between subjects in England ; 
but as between citizens of countries in ])roximity with 
them is not known ; great respect is shown to tliis law ; 
and under it they have rights attached there ; and the 
courts do not rule against the customs of ages — they do 
not rule against all habits of business. Legislative action 
is necessary here in our country. This catching up, trap- 
jDing men is not in their practice. 

And as for the mere imitation, we have a right to make 
as good an article as England, and diminish their business ; 
if the law is vigoroiLS in punishing men who sin with their 
eyes open, they will have "justice though the heavens 
fall." 

Yankees' claims are dear to them as England's rights 
are dear to them ; they are now to be protected hy the 
hroad shield of justice — law is the guardian angel of our 
land — the intercessor between ri2;ht and wrong. 

The jealous policy of England comes into our midst 
with its lion face, and says " Nothing is good but English," 



3G8 EEMINISCENGES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

and it has been the notion ground into our minds ; tlie 
light of civilization gleaming with its brightest luster can 
not do away this idle, foolish prejudice ; but the notion is 
one against American industry. 

The experience of protection to our honest yeomanry 
engaged in American manufacture shows it is wise policy ; 
it has become our economy to purchase our articles at 
cheaper prices. There is not room for all England's inven- 
tions ; we claim some credit for the genius of New England 
sons — her inventions, her improvements. 

If the acts of these jjersons manufacturing cotempo- 
raneously with them were injurious to their traffic, the 
cause of this diminution of their trade is long as time, vo- 
luminous as the world. 

The wondrous changes in the price of cotton and other 
things, make the ivorld tremble. England's heart-pulse 
beats quicker ; her eagle eye grows sharper. She gazes 
discriminatingly on our growing business, and grudges us 
every well turned dollar from our mint. But new light 
flashes out from the Empire City — the great business mart 
of our republic — the pride of our land ; — it dims their 
English vision. 



"O" 



These plaintiffs ruined their own reputation by making 
poorer thread ; abusing the wide-spread confidence they 
had attained in the community, in this world of ours. 
Theirs had become notoriously poor. But ours is a vast 
advance. Look at our thread ! Beautiful ! new ! What 
novice country girl would not rather use a new thread of 
her own husband's manufacture ? It is the genius of 
spirit that inspires -them with new zeal, and this new arti- 
cle never injured any one. Goodness is not jaroductive of 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 3G9 

evil. Every thing has its day. " Every clog has its clay." 
This has had its day ; new plants spring up and o'ershadow 
the old. This is the law of nature — the law of our bein"- i 

This defendant is not to be borne down with the sins 
of all the impostors of the day. We are not the scape- 
goats of crime ; we come up to meet the charge, as soldiers 
come up to battle, with stout hearts, and souls of vigor, 
honesty, and good faith. Let them charge home their 
bayonets ; and the verdict will be ours, or at any rate one 
of lenity. 

Tliis thing is brought up so strenuously — so contin- 
uously ! Let it not fill up your whole eye, as a small 
acorn brought close to the vision will hide the whole eye, 
and hide a whole forest of the fairest hopes. The to be is 
to be proved ; that he conspired to defraud these men of 
gold, of fortunes, — men with long-stringed purses of their 
rights. 

I tell you, Gentlemen of the jury, the reputation of 
the defendant's counsel (himself) is much better than the 
thread of their client. 

This is a commercial article, and a captivating one ; 
offering it at a lower price, and getting the good will of a 
trade, it holds the customer. The world goes along elbow- 
ing, and every man elbows his own articles into the mar- 
kets. If a man's article is a good one, it will pay him at 
home ; in the same way as a good book or painting will 
render profit enough, without extending the traffic to a 
foreign market. 

They, the plaintiffs, are to prove that the extent of 

damages were more than nominal, in order that they 

16* 



370 REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

should have just cause to bring this action ; that it is not 
due to holding their thread at higher prices, and at a ruin- 
ous loss to the purchaser. 

I leave the cause for the present in your hands, Gentle- 
men of the jury ; hut it will be considered more ably hei'e- 
after by the eloquent advocate who is to precede me in 
closing this long and fatiguing case. It is of great impor- 
tance to this man ; it is one which will result either to his 
permanent advantage or injury. With this idea upper- 
most in your mind, and in accordance with the law and 
evidence, you will shape your final verdict. We shall now 
submit to the consideration of your mind the testimony of 
the defendant. 

But remember, this man made the best article he 
could, and sold it as his own manufacture : no fraud, no 
imposition was practiced by him. However gross the 
fraud may have been by his agents in disposition of the 
article, he is not accountable for this ; they are liable for 
their own acts of wrong, and they can not be imposed 
upon this man, if the justice due to him is rightly admin- 
istered, and equity takes its serene course. 

Kemember, also, that the improvements, the invention, 
the progress of civilization, are a great incentive for men 
to develope the powers of their minds, in rivaling others 
who bring before the public the product of tlieir persever- 
ing labors and untiring industry. So " wags" the business 
world. Ambition, the love of gain, the regard for wealth, 
is another new impetus to action, and urges men on to the 
work. Others do the like acts, and not at the expense of 
reputation or the profit accruing from their exertion. 

Such never was the case. Such, I hope and trust, 
never will be the case in this land, or in any other mer- 
cantile country on earth. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 371 

POWER LOOM PATENT, 

This was a case Avhcre an alleged improvement was 
complained of as an infringement. Only a single sentence 
— single but striking — of Mr. Choate's argument for the 
defendant survives ; this I happened to write down. 

Speaking of a witness, he said, 

His expressions are somewhat vague, hut they are to he 
construed as the common speech of the land ; the man 
was speaking the language of the land. 

Does this inventor, the ijlaintiff, think to monopolize 
power looms for the rest of his life ? Centuries have been 
consumed and nations emjjloyed in perfecting tliis loom, 
and because this inventor has taken one step in its progress 
is he to have the ivhole as liis own ? No, gentlemen ! 
Whatever his inventive power, he didn't come early enough 
into the world, for that I 

PETITION FOR A RAILROAD FROM SALEM TO MALDEN, BE- 
FORE A COMMITTEE OF THE LEGISLATURE, 

In this case the whole argument of Mr, Choate in suj)- 
port of the petition is preserved. Extracts are here given 
sufficient to illustrate the whole scope and force of his ar- 
gument, and the glow of his rhetoric, even upon these worn 
and threadbare themes. The Committee having been called 
to order by the Chairman, Mr. Choate said : 

Mr. Chairman : This application is felt to be one of 
very great importance by that considerable portion of the 
community who have presented it, and the case before you 
very well entitles itself to be dispassionately considered 
and wisely disposed of. 

Not having the honor to be one, either of the Commit- 
tee or the Legislature, I feel very sensibly the delicacies of 



372 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

attempting to assist you and your colleagues in the dis- 
charge of your duties. But it has been the immemorial 
practice to admit counsel before committees, and I shall 
aim, therefore, to perform the duty now devolving on me 
with the same zeal and frankness that I should use in other 
Courts lower than this — the highest of all. And if, as may 
perhaps happen, from friendship to the petitioners, from a 
strong conviction of the merits of their case, or from what- 
ever cause, I may pass beyond the limits of entire accuracy 
in the statement of the facts or the conclusions from them, 
I am sure the Committee will be as indulgent to excuse as 
they will be prompt to detect it. 

And first, let us go back to the origin of this applica- 
tion. It does not spring, as argued by the other side, from 
any speculative railroad mania of to-day or yesterday ; it 
is not asked for to supersede any other road, old or recent. 
If some think to trace it to any so small policies, they are 
mistaken. Such is not its ground. It had its origin many 
years back — as far almost as the birth of the railroad sys- 
tem. The great public wants, in 1836, succeeded in pro- 
curing the charter of the Eastern Eailroad, the lower route, 
but the same parties now represented by the petitioners 
were here then. They come now with the added growth, 
the added experience, the added inconveniences of ten years 
more, but they were here then, and have been still here. 
In all previous stages of the great legislative deliberation, 
anterior to the actual grant of that charter, it was a mat- 
ter of sharp and serious doubt, in the public mind, what 
line should be adopted between Beverly and Boston. As 
long ago as then was this sharp conflict and grave doubt 
between the lower and the interior route. The petitioners 
wpre not inattentive to their own interests at tliat time. 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS C HO ATE. 373 

Danvers, full of energy, of capital — the capital of mid- 
dling men — that s^Decies of prosperity commanding more 
than all others the favor of government, full of industry, 
ever true to her duties, from the time she sent her sons to 
the battle-field of Lexington to the day when she appro- 
priated her last dollar for the education of the poor — Dan- 
vers was here then. Lynn, that vast beehive of work-shops 
of Essex, was here then. Saugus, of which the' learned 
counsel has spoken in so condescending and contemptuous 
terms, was here then. 

Unfortunately they were obliged then to combine on a 
much more unftivorable route than they are now enabled 
to offer, terminating on a ferry perhaps even worse than 
that of the remonstrants themselves ; but with all that, it 
was better than the present road. And now, when their 
route has the vast merit of offering a speedier, surer and 
safer conveyance to Boston — avoiding a ferry altogether — • 
they come again to apply for their old and favorite line, 
and they will persist in the movement, which, springing 
out of the unalterable nature of things, must from very 
justice be granted at last. They originally urged that 
the lower route, the then line from the south side of Sa- 
lem, creeping across a desert, plunging through a marsh, 
arriving at deep water at East Boston, where the ferry 
boat was exposed to all the detention of fog, ice, and other 
impediments, and leaving at last the disconsolate passen- 
gers in an inconvenient terminus, far removed from the 
business and inhabited part of the town, they urged that 
such a railroad deserted and abandoned their peculiar in- 
terests, and was no railroad for them. They denounced it 
accordingly, and fully and fairly gave notice that they should 
not cease to apply for relief to the Legislature. 

Tho road has been tried, anrl fnllv ti-icd for ten yoars. 



374 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

and these same parties are here again for relief. I speak 
of these things to show that this is not a temporary move- 
ment, but that it springs from the reality and nature of 
things, and that it confidently awaits the action of the 
government. 

It was an easy thing in 1836 to meet our arguments by 
small jests and bold promises. It was easy to tell the 
Legislature that the business and resources of the road 
would draw into use the ingenuity and experience of the 
skillful and inventive, so that ferry boats would soon be 
constructed with rail tracks on board, easily able to convey 
a train of cars from one side to the other. But who has 
lived to see this ? We have indeed seen some tw^o hundred 
men, women, and children crossing in fog and obscurity, 
steering by compass, like Columbus in his caraval, uncer- 
tain what land they should make, but nothing like this. 
It was far easier thus to talk than fairly to answer our ar- 
guments or meet our case, and this accordingly was the 
course pursued. The small laugh was raised, the stupen- 
dous blunder was committed, and the Eastern Railroad was 
chartered on its present route. 

Now, sir, who are the parties to the application before 
you ? On the one hand the public, that is, those who are, 
in the contemplation of the law and of reason, the public; 
and on the other hand some small private interest. 

God forbid that I should stand here and ask you to vio- 
late one single private right, though of no higher value 
than a blade of perished grass. No, sir, no. And even 
were any one so to do, I well know what would, and ought 
to be your decision. But this is no such case. It is the 
ordinary case, simply, of the many against the few. The 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 375 

great interest of the great public, against a minuter inter- 
est of a small portion of that public. Interests only not 
rights, are concerned. Here are four large towns, with 
25,000 inhabitants — two represented by a corporate vote, 
and the others by the signatures of a large majority of their 
l^^gal voters. Salem, stung by the very taunt of the other 
side, sends to-day 650. There are, too, from 1,000 to 
1,200 of the women of Essex — our mothers, daughters, 
sisters and wives — who ask us for the removal of an offen- 
sive and shameful annoyance, to Avhicli they are subjected 
on every journey they make to the metropolis. 

Danvers, the original jjetitioning town, is the third in 
Essex county for the vote she throws and the capital she 
wields. She is a larger manufacturer of leather than any 
other town, and manufactures also great quantities of wool, 
iron and glue. Besides all this, her agricultural capacities 
are sufficient, if aided and encouraged by legislation, to 
make her one vast garden, or ratiier a vast series of gar- 
dens, for the supply of the market of Boston. She is be- 
fore you, a jietitioner for railroad accommodation. 

Lynn, too, is here by a series of admirable and powerful 
resolutions, to which I will ask the attention of the com- 
mittee. (Mr. Choate here read the resolutions.) 

Such is the voice of Lynn, presented and supported by 
the men she most delights to honor — her selectmen — her 
Hoods, Webster, Breeds, and others. 

I have already referred to the number of petitioners 
from Maiden and Saugus, and other towns, whose names 
are before you. 

But our learned friends laugh at all this, and say that 
nothing is more easy than to procure as many names as 
you please to any petition. If this be so, I wonder, then, 
why they have not employed more jjens in their own be- 



376 llEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

half. Why, sh, in the face of this overwhelming evidence 
of public opinion, not one human being — ^man, woman, or 
child — not one interest even, but just the Eastern Railroad 
corporation — appears to remonstrate against this petition. 
It is the traveling public on one side, and the men who live 
by selling traveling accommodations on the other — and that 
is just all. 

But this particular demand may be unreasonable. Let 
us look, therefore, a little further into the details of the 
case, in its simplest and narrowest aspects. I say, then : 

1st. That these petitioners, or a large mass of them, are 
entitled to increased facilities of railroad transportation — 
on every principle of policy which can be sustained, and by 
every particle of evidence offered — by branching out, either 
to one or the other of the eastern roads : — and, 

2d. That, by permitting them to make their branch to 
the upper road, the great aggregate of public good and 
public accommodation will be vastly more promoted than 
by compelling them to resort to the lower. 

Upon the first proposition, that the parties are entitled 
to increased accommodation, there will be no occasion to 
detain the Committee long. The fact is perfectly clear, and 
no longer open to controversy. Danvers, by the concession 
of everybody, on every principle that the Legislature ever 
gave or withheld a charter, is entitled to it. 

But the counsel says that Danvers is very near to Sa- 
lem. Yes, sir, she is the adjoining town. Her people are 
just near enough to hear the whistle of the locomotive, and 
to gaze at the sparks of that flying giant — to them as our- 
selves, for all practical purposes, as are the falling meteors 
in the midnight firmament ? Mr. Chairman, this is a sin 
and a shame. And so we hear it said on every side, by 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 377 

every committee and every counsel, excepting only the 
counsel here. 

But we sliall have a very inadequate idea of the ad- 
vantages of this road if we regard it merely as a means of 
facilitating transportation to and from the city. 

That is not all it will accomplish. For the towns of 
Saugus, Lynn and Danvers. and I^ynn, in particular, abound 
in numerous beautiful sites, which j^romise to become, 
througli its agency, most eligible residences for persons of 
moderate means who do business in town. Grant this 
charter, and these situations will be purchased, built upon, 
and soon show forth as the hapjiy abodes of civilized life. 
Is all this nothing ? Is there, in the estimation of my 
learned friend, who has acquired a reputation so enviable 
through his able assistance to the cause of railroad progress, 
and who, I am sorry to see, so forgetful of that reputation 
as to appear against my clients here — is there no use in a 
raih'oad but to precipitate the traveler from the country 
into the city, at top speed, and ejaculate him out again as 
soon as his business is completed ? Are there no moral 
influences in railroads ? Is it nothing that they atford the 
business man, whose six months in every year are i)assed 
amidst the crowd, dust and turmoil of the noisy streets of 
town, the opportunity to pass the other six in the bosom 
of a happy family, at a quiet and secluded country seat ? 
That they give the pale and wan denizen of the noisy 
workshop and dingy counting-house the means of invig- 
oration and health, from the V)reezes of the country hills, 
without detriment to his worldly prospects or the sacrifice 
of valuable time ? That they cause the capital of the city 
to flow into the country througli ten thousand streams, 
beautifying and fertilizing the whole land ? Sir, I entirely 



378 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

agree with the writer in the Westminster Review, ah-eady 
quoted on each side, that these moral and social influences 
of railroads are the considerations which most entitle them 
to favor. 

The new road may indeed take a twentieth, a sixteenth, 
a quarter per cent, from the value of the Eastern Railroad 
stocks ; but if, through its means, one hundred, fifty, twenty, 
aye, ten healthy children, are raised to manhood and woman- 
hood, the Republic will be the gainer. 

Therefore, I say, our right to additional railroad accom- 
modations is fully established. Then, how shall we have 
them ? 

Prima fronte, Sir, it would seem to be the inclination 
of a just and parental government, to give its citizens the 
accommodation they seek in the way they seek it, if that 
mode be not unjust or capricious. Now, gentlemen, here 
are Danvers, Saugus and West Lynn, who have appeared 
before you and made out a clear case of the necessity of 
some additional accommodation. The case is just as good 
for the particular accommodation they ask, as for any. The 
petitioners feel profoundly and keenly that they shall be 
greatly better satisfied with the accommodation in the 
mode they ask for — with being treated like men — free 
agents, allowed to assist themselves and develop their own 
internal industry — than with being compelled to content 
themselves with Avhat the Eastern road may choose to give 
them, and walk only in the path which the Eastern Cor- 
poration mAy prescribe. And again I would remark, with- 
out intending to be and hoping not to appear importunate 
in the least, that a just and parental government, if it 
properly can do so, will grant the accommodation it affords 
m the way in which it is sous-ht. Good nature dictates so 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 379 

much. A just and sound policy dictates it. If a little fa- 
cility be granted to us, but not the facility we desire, it 
would seem to be next to refusing it altogethei". Cer- 
tainly the father who, being asked for a fish, gave his son 
a serpent, was the harder of the two ; but that other 
father can scarcely be said to have shown a parental and 
kindly disposition, who, being asked for bread, choked his 
child to death with fish. 

There is one most desperate after-thought presented by 
the remonstrants, and that is, that no more parallel or 
competing lines, as they call them, should be chartered to 
any point of the comjiass. There being already, in other 
words, established i-ailroads, towards the north, south, east 
and west — great roads, if you please, and we will allow so 
much, — the position is taken that all additional accommo- 
dation is to be had only by branches from these great 
roads, perpendicular or diagonal, to the communities to be 
favored. And this enormous heresy is carried yet one step 
further ; and that is, that nobody, except these main cor- 
porations, has any right to construct branches at all. The 
branches, if constructed at all, are to be built only by great 
routes. If this be really so, then it becomes a question of 
extreme interest to all inter-lying populations to know to 
Avhich road they belong ; " Under which king, Bezonian, 
speak or die \" Who owns us ? Who is to make our 
branch ? These will be the questions. 

Gentlemen, I pray your attention here to the specious 
plausibilities which make up the whole case of these re- 
monstrants. 

But, gentlemen, giving all that to the winds, by grant- 
ing the charter we ask you will more promote the various 
and considerable aggregate of public accommodation, than 



380 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

if you compel us to be dependent on the road of the re- 
monstrants. Because you will enable travelers to avoid a 
nuisance, and to gain in speed : and you will afford rail- 
road facilities to thousands of people, and large quantities 
of merchandise, of which they are now wholly deprived, 
and will continue wholly deprived, even if the Eastern 
road builds its so-much-talked-of branch. By building 
the new road we offer the people a communication with tlie 
city, over a secure, substantial, jicrmanent bridge, instead 
of compelling them to take the chance of swimming, and 
the risk of sinking in a ferry boat. I do not fear to discuss 
the comparative merits of a bridge and a ferry with the in- 
genious and eloquent counsel for the remonstrants. And 
I can not, in the outset, blame at all the Eastern Company 
for striving to make the best of their case. Their route 
has been fastened on them. The blunder has been made. 
The past is incurable. The necessity of steeling by com- 
pass and the sound of the fog-bell, is upon them, and they 
can not avoid it or get rid of it. They do right to defend 
themselves, and nobody can blame the pretty, poetical 
little fancies in which they indulge. "What can't be 
cured must be endured ;" and I will do the whole body the 
justice to say that they liave gone to the very verge of 
veracity in making their defense. But, Sir, " de gustlhus 
non est disputandum." The learned, though somewhat 
fanciful gentleman, has eloquently set forth the delight 
which must be felt by all, in catching an occasional 
glimpse of the harbor as they cross in the boat. As if 
the business people of Danvers, Lynn or Saugus, would 
care to stop, or think of stopping to gaze upon the thread- 
bare and monotonous beauties of Boston harbor, when 
hurrying to transact their afiliirs. Unfortunately, too, 
for the gentleman's case, in this respect, it so happens that 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 381 

these saiiie people have compelled this company to arch 
their boat all over, and Avail it up all round, so that 
nothinsi; at all can be seen. Then the delij^ht of meetinsc 
and shaking hands with an old friend ! Conceive, gentle- 
men, the pastoral, touching, pathetic picture of two Salem 
gentlemen, who have been in the habit oi' seeing each other 
a dozen times a day for the last twenty-five years, almost 
rushing into each other's arms on board the ferry boat — 
what transport ! We can only regret that such felicity 
should be so soon broken uji by the necessity of running a 
race against time, or fighting with each other for a seat in 
the cars. 

They urge, however, that the passage is short, only 
eight or ten minutes — an average of nine by " Shrewsbury 
clock." I regret, too, that these minutes are so much less 
profitably employed by our friends, than by gaining three 
miles of start on our railroad. And they agree that the 
average of detention, over this nine or ten minutes, has 
only been four seconds. What does that profit to him 
who has been delayed six hours .^ Or to him who has 
lost the opj)ortunity to pay his note at the bank by ten 
minutes ? Or to him who stands, for hours, at the slip, 
and sees his wife or sister tossing about in the ice within 
six feet of him ? Why, Sir, you might as well go to the 
soldier, on the eve of the battle, and say to him, " You 
will be killed, I dare say ; but consider that your death is 
an average of only one good scratch a ])iece distributed 
among your regiment ?" Will he tbank you for such 
consolation ? I rather suspect not. 

That gentleman shows that the corporation have tried 
every expedient, and taken every measure to remedy all 
inconvenience. I agree with him, and will take his own 
argument to prove that the evil is permanent and incurable. 



3S2 REMINISCENCES OF R U F U S C II O A T E . 

Mr. Chairman : In approaching the close of the re- 
marks with which I have to trouble the Committee in this 
case, I beg leave to present, in a condensed view, the points 
on which the petitioners rely. 

That increased railroad accommodation is due to Dan- 
vers, Lynn and Saugus, is not only proved, but not denied. 

That of the alleged two methods of securing such ac- 
commodation, by a branch from Danvers to the upper or 
to the lower route, that which we j)ropose is decidedly 
fovored by the whole public, while it is opposed only by 
the private interests of the Eastern Eailroad Corporation. 

That to more than 110,000 passengers per year, our 
road wnll afford a passage to Boston by land, avoiding all 
ferries, and in all respects, speedy, safe, secure, comfortable 
and agreeable. 

That it will give accommodation and railroad trans- 
portation to 30,000 tons of merchandise now deprived of 
such advantages. 

That it will accommodate the trade of Danvers, Mar- 
blehead, Lynn and Saugus, which the present road does 
not. 

That it will greatly aid and increase the trade and pro- 
ductions of Essex county, in various respects — esjiecially 
as regards granite, ice, bricks and fish — while the Eastern 
route and its branches can do nothing towards this purpose. 

That it has a much more central and convenient ter- 
minus in the city of Boston than the Eastern road. 

That it will afford to the town of Sau^-us railroad ac- 
commodation never yet enjoyed — to West Lynn greatly 
enlarged accommodation ; and that it will, in both towns, 
materially increase the value of now unoccupied lands. 

In this aspect, sir, which I conceive to be clearly estab- 
lished throughout, I take it there is no room for delibera- 



REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 383 



tion at all, unless the Committee are satisfied tliat we are, 
body and soul, the property of the Eastern Railroad Cor- 
poration, and belong to them exclusively. It is possible 
that the grant of our petition might interfere with the 
pecuniary advantages of the stockholders of the Eastern 
road ; that it might detract one, two, three, four oi: tive 
per cent., as the case may be, from their annual profits. 
But of what account is that when we consider how much 
it will add to the convenience, time, comfort, health and 
life of the 45,000 passengers from Danvers and the many 
other thousands along the line ? That it should take a 
half per cent, or three per cent, from the profits of the 
Eastern stockholders, I regret as much as my learned 
friend. But I put against this private loss the increase in 
the value of every j)Ound of leather and glue, every ton of 
iron, granite and ice, to the public at large. We may per- 
haps diminish the wealth of a few hundred individuals, by 
a small amount, but, on the other hand, we stimulate the 
industry, quicken the labor, and develop the resources of 
thousands upon thousands. Look upon " this picture and 
on this," and then decide the question on rational grounds. 

But my learned brother, whose extensive and well- 
earned reputation mainly rests upon his successful exer- 
tions in favor of just such lines as that we now ask for, 
can not have meant to deny the general benefit to the 
public resulting from the principle of competition itself. 
Why, sir, 'prima fronte^ competition is the life of ti'ade and 
the great promoter of public good. It may, perhaps, some- 
times be otherwise in railway experience, for circumstances 
alter cases. But the result of the whole history of English 
experience, on this subject, is, that competition among rail- 
roads has done no harm whatever, except, in some cases, 



384 llEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 



to slightly raise the fares. There are no deserted tracks 
from this cause ; there has not been a pin's worth of dam- 
age to the hair of a man's head. In some cases, it is true, 
competing lines have become united under one corporation, 
and fares have been somewhat increased ; but the general, 
grand result, has been the establishment of a system of 
railway communication, the like of which the sun has never 
looked upon. And if this evil be apprehended, what can 
be easier than for the Legislature to fix the maximum of 
fares which shall be charged ? In truth, Mr. Chairman, 
all the arguments of my learned brother, respecting com- 
petition, are entirely unworthy of him, and — were they 
from any other source — unworthy of serious notice. Why, 
sir, our State map beams and sparkles, like the firmament, 
with competing lines. 

And I join issue with my brother, in his statement that 
it would be bad policy in the State to grant this charter. 
Bad policy to meet a pojjular demand by a legislative sup- 
ply ? We have shown that railroads w^ere made for the 
people, as the Sabbath is made for man, not the j)eople for 
the railroads ; and I will only say — replying to the gentle- 
man — that the bad policy would lie in refusing this appli- 
cation. If the people shall see, in a case like this, that the 
government disregard the rights of twenty-five thousand 
inhabitants, having occasion to send and receive 30,000 
tons of merchandise per annum, from the apprehension of 
a contingent effect on existing railroad stock — then, sir, 
the days of that administration which sustains such a 
policy, are numbered. The inscription is written, " Mene, 
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin !" 

Sir, I know the peoj^le of Danvers, and I owe them 
much. I judge of the rest of the citizens of Massachu- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 385 

setts by them, and so judging, I know tlicm to be honest, 
just, and ready to sacrifice the last drop in their veins 
rather than infringe the legal rights of any individual. 
And I am entirely satisfied that such a people will not be 
called on to see it declared through their representatives 
in the Legislature, that the servant is greater than his mas- 
ter ; particularly when the servant is a private corporation, 
however respectable, and in other respects however gen- 
erous ; and that master the whole public. 

"For this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no 
grievance ever should rise in the Commonwealth ; that let 
no man in this world expect ; but when complaints are 
freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, 
then is- the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise 
men look for." 

THE OLIVER SMITH WILL CASE. 

This case attracted very great interest in its day, from 
the magnitude of the property involved and the celebrity of 
the counsel employed — Mr. Webster for the will, and Mr. 
Choate against it. It was argued in July, 1847. The will 
of Oliver Smith was disputed, and the whole case turned on 
its attestation. One of the witnesses to the will was T. P. 
Phelps. It was alleged that at the time of making his 
signature upon .the instrument he was insane. He ap- 
peared upon the witness' stand, and was subjected to a 
long direct and cross-examination. The evidence being all 
in, on a Thursday morning, in a court house crowded with 
people, very many ladies being present, Mr. Choate spoke 
for three hours. An abstract of the argument was re- 
ported, and from one of the few copies still extant I make 
the following extracts. Although the abstract loses much 

17 



386 REMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE. 

of the force and fire of the rhetoric, it preserves the strength 
of the argument. 

Mr. Choate began by remarking to the jury ; — The 
heirs at hxw of Oliver Smith, the children of his brothers 
and sisters, have brought this case before you, under the 
full conviction that the instrument here offered for pro- 
bate ought not to deprive them of their inheritance. It is 
not surprising that they have come hither in confidence 
that you will thoroughly investigate their claims, and 
equitably adjust them. Ever ready and offering to make 
a compromise with the legatees, yet not willing that this 
whole estate should pass from the name and family of the 
testator, by the mere forms of law, and against its spirit. 
They are not distant heirs, coming from a far-off country 
to claim this estate. But they were near, and once dear 
to the testator. They dwelt around him, rendering those 
nameless kind offices which ministered to his comfort. 

To a valid Will the law gives absolute effect ; and if the 
testator has complied with the forms of law, the will 
must be executed, however absurd or unnatural its pro- 
visions may be. Surely such a will as this could never 
have been anticipated ; it was not to be dreamed of. It 
was natural that those who had lived around him for fifty 
years, his relations by blood, should expect from their 
uncle, a bachelor, at least some token of his remembrance. 
Had he seen fit to divide between them and the devisees, 
regarding as well the claims of blood as of the public serv- 
ice, as we are now ready to do, the labor of this investiga- 
tion would never have fallen to you. 

No doubt the owner of property, by complying with 
the provisions of the law, may disinheiit the child of his 
loins. The \qm first provides for heirs, and says, that while 
a right will may deprive them of the inheritance, yet the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 387 

forms of law must be strictly and rigidly followed. The 
reason why the law provides that property shall descend to 
heirs, in the absence of a will, is not that somebody may be 
made richer, but to save the rush and scramble that would 
ensue if evei'i/body hud an equal right to the accumulations 
of the deceased. While a relative exists on the face of the 
earth, the law seeks him out; and not till the most diligent 
scrutiny fails to find an heir will the law interpose to take 
such property for public uses. And this is according to na- 
ture and the eternal fitness of things. Therefore in every 
code, by every lawgiver, in every age, the right of the heir 
at law has been held first and most sacred. 

Still a discretionary power is given to disinherit heirs. 
But it may be so cruelly, so suddenly, and so capriciously 
exercised as to disappoint the most reasonable expectations. 
Therefore, while the general power is sacredly secured, 
every law provides a great variety of forms, complying 
with which the testator may disinherit his child ; but fail- 
ing to comply with them there is no to ill. The ties of blood 
are then regarded. Then the first and the last will is the 
will of the law. 

The Will of Oliver Smith is not according to the forms 
of law. 

The law requires that every will be attested by three 
competent witnesses — competent to inspect the mind of 
the testator — competent to judge of the whole transaction. 
The principal object of this provision is to protect the 
heirs at law, and in a limited degree only to protect the 
testator. For the protection of the heirs, the law provides 
that the testator shall be surrounded by three competent 
witnesses, to read the mind of the testator. In the present 
case we have not such witnesses. We are entitled to three 
7ni7ids, and not to three bodies merely. We are entitled 



388 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

to three toliole men — ^men indej)enclent of eacli other, hut 
Ave haven't got them. 

Generally, men do not make thek wills until old age or 
sickness is upon them. It is when the testator approaches 
the line of imbecility that the security of witnesses is re- 
quired, lest cunning men come between him and his child. 

Mr. Choate proceeded to state his views of the legal 
meaning of a competent witness to a will. He must be 
able to " try the mind" of the testator, and judge of liis 
sanity. On this point various authorities were cited and 
commented upon, particularly the opinion of Lord Cam- 
den, who ruled that a witness to a will should be able 
to "inspect" the mind, and test the capacity of the tes- 
tator. 

Mr. Choate then laid down the proposition, that The- 
ophilus P. Phelps was not such a comj^ctent witness, which 
he maintained at length, upon a review of the testimony 
in the case. 

Look at the manner in which the transaction was 
done ? What was done to test the capacity of the tes- 
tator ? Nothing at all. Here was an old man, upon the 
verge of the grave. Neither of the witnesses were ac- 
quainted with him — never had spoken a word to him and 
scarcely knew him. They Avere called in. The testator 
was asked if it Avas his last Avill and testament, and if he 
Avished the witnesses to sign it. He said yes. They signed 
it and went away. The whole transaction Avas without 
the forms of inspection. 

Witnesses to a will should be perfectly sound in mind. 
What are they to do ? As before stated, they are to sur- 
round the testator, to protect the heirs at law. They are 
to try the testator's mind. Think of Theophilus P. Phelps 



# 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 389 

trying the capacity and sanity of Oliver Smith ? The 
"witnesses are also to protect the testator, whose hands may 
have outlived his head, from imposition. 

To perform such a function, the witness must possess 
quick perception and close observation. The mind that 
reads the spirit must he free from morbid influences, and 
must be in a perfectly normal state. 

Theophilus P. Phel})s is the son of an educated and 
able man — grandson of the illustrious Theophilus Parsons. 
It was natural that he should be destined to a profession. 
He went to college. For the first, second, and third years, 
he was cheerful and social, and in these respects in no way 
unlike his fellow students. In the latter part of the third 
or the beginning of the fourth year, he was taken sick — 
not of common disease — but of a morbid disease of the 
brain. He went home once or twice, and was unable to 
perform his part at Commencement. It was then he 
dropped mentally dead — that day his mind died. Then 
began that strange pain and oppression of the head from 
which he has never since been free. From that hour to 
this a settled gloom has hung over him like a pall. His 
occupations m the field, and in the composition of his book, 
were struggles to work ofi' his feelings. Life, from that 
time — save the brief period of mental excitement in 1843 
— has been to him a long sleep of the soul. For six years 
he has not entered the house of a neighbor ; for six years 
he has not enjoyed the calm air of a house of worship. He 
has been ever eating his own heart. 

In August, 1843, he was not mad for the first time, 
but differently mad. He then became visibly and openly 
insane. His eye, which was to inspect the mind of the 
testator, saw a conspiracy in his own brother. To escape 
from this, he attempted suicide. It was a disease of the 



390 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

brain — of the nervous system, Sucli a witness is not what 
we are entitled to by law. 

Mr. Choate then went on to argue that the burden of 
proof, as to the competency of the witness, was upon the 
party setting up the will, and that inasmuch as it had been 
shown, on the part of the heirs at law, that the witness 
was of unsound mind a few months before the date of the 
attestation, it became necessary for the other party to show 
a restoration. This rule, as to the burden of proof, was 
qualified by another rule ; that where the insanity origi- 
nated in some sudden, acute, particular cause, then tliero 
was no presumption that the insanity continued after such 
cause had subsided. 

He then argued, upon the testimony, that no such 
sudden cause had been shown in this case, the accident of 
his father being inadequate. His mind never turned on 
the accident to his father. Plis disease existed certainly a 
month before the accident, on his return from Philadel- 
phia, and whether it commenced at the close of his college 
life or not, it is indisputable that it existed from July, 
1843, to December or January following. Unless, then, 
the other party show that after that time the disease was 
removed prior to July, 1844, the presumption is that he 
continued insane until that time. 

The testimony in the case fails to show whether or not 
the insanity was so removed. If he were now on trial for 
perjury in 1844, would you convict him ? The law would 
not hurt a hair of his head. It is of no consequence 
whether he be restored at the present day, that is wholly 
collateral to the issue. 

His own account does not prove such restoration. In 
this Dr. Woodward and Dr. Bell agree. On the contrary, 
it proves him to have been incompetent to attest the will. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 391 

Ho was there present, Lut he now remembers the signing 
of only one paper by the testator. His mind was not 
there — he was broodintr over some delusion. 

He gives no reason for his recovery in December, 1843 ; 
none has been given. The same bodily disease continued, 
as before that time. 

All that has been offered in evidence to prove his res- 
toration before the attestation of the will is reconcilable 
with the continuance of his disease. An insane man can 
labor in the field, can compose a connected book, can take 
delio;ht in reading. 

Mr. Clioate, in closing, recapitulated his three principal 
positions : 

1st. That insanity having been proved near the end 
of 1844, the burden of proof was on the other party to 
prove a restoration in July following. 

2d. That the testimony offered for the purjjose was 
reconcilable with continued insanity. 

3d. That every cause of his insanity at any time, is 
shown to have existed when the will was attested. 

Those causes, said Mr. Choate, were partly the terrible 
pain and oppression of the head, which lasted for six years ; 
but mainly and chiefly his long idleness and solitude from 
the time when he left college to the present day. Mr. 
Choate dwelt at length, and with great effect, upon seclu- 
sion as a cause of melancholy and madness ; and concluded 
with a beautifully apposite quotation from " Burton's 
Anatomy of Melancholy" — his closing injunction to those 
disposed to insanity — " Be not solitary, he not idle." 
The reporter of this case adds : 

" We have ariven above a brief outline of Mr. Choate's 
argument, occasionally using his phraseology; but we think 



392 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

it bare justice to him to say, that no one but a short-hand 
writer can adequately report his language." 

After a recess of five minutes, Mr, Webster addressed 
the jury for about two hours ; and his first sentence is pic- 
turesque and very comj)limentary to Choate. 

He commenced by observing that in the case itself there 
was nothing extraordinary. It involved the attestation of 
a will. There may be interesting circumstances around it. 
The case turns a good deal on the character of a young 
man. The property is large. The heirs are disappointed. 
There is enough to make a scene and a picture. There is 
the canvas, and, as you have seen, there is a master. 
Things have been presented in a dramatic form. Dramas 
are made from common occurrences. The hand of a master 
gives them interest. The scenes of Shakspeare are more 
interesting now than when they occurred. It is a common 
remark that the Apollo and the Venus, and all statues, are 
but human works wrought out of rough stone. 

Your duty is, to take the common vieiv — to go to the 
real and substantial facts. The question is the Will of 
Oliver Smith. 

March 30th, 1848. — Mr, Choate argued yesterday on 
the question of the boundary between Massachusetts and 
Ehode Island, before a Committee of the Senate. 

I noticed particularly that in the monotonous level 
of his legal citation and reasoning and appealing to rec- 
ords, he would never allow his audience to flag, but would 
every now and then startle and arouse them by some peal 
of eloquence or witty allusion. Thus he broke out once 
like a flash of lightning in a dark day, from his tedious 
reciting, " When the eagle would soar to make her nest 
in the stars why did they not openly clip its wings ?" His 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 393 

light wit was not at all labored ; it seemed suggested hj 
the course of remarks. Thus, speaking of Eoger Williams, 
and subsequently of his lapsed charter, he said ; — " Sir, 
the charter was stone dead ; dead as Eoger Williams." 
Again, ironically, " W^hy did not King Charles II. boldly 
say, ' I know nothing of my subjects' colonies, their metes 
and bounds, so absorbed am I in my metaphysical re- 
searches !' " 

December 28th, 1848. — Heard Mr, Choate against 
Webster to-day in a divorce case. 

Choate said of one of the witnesses. Either he had said 
truly, or it was a splendid improvisation ; and he ought 
to be seized for the stage, and would make his fortune 
there. 

He must have sunk manhood's and boyhood's qualities 
indestructible. His evidence is confused, divided and di- 
verse, like geological j)eriods. First a grand granitic sub- 
struction of truth, a middle of silence, then a superstructure 
of speech, for testimony. Of another witness, wlio swore 
to looking through a key-hole, and withdrawing her eye, 
he said, Would she have seen all this, and see7i no more ? 
Such another instance was not in the history of flesh and 
blood. She was at an age when women see nothing or 
see all. 

Were their cheeks crimson with sated and extinguished 
passion ? She has sworn she told nobody for seven years. 
For seven years she drops it from mind ; then in sharp, 
bold, prominent outline, she reveals all. There are clearly 
defined periods in her revelations, like the rings round a 
hemlock rind. 



394 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

He was a personable man. He was of the ambiguous 
period, when juvenescence merges into adolescence. To 
judge these jollities and frolics so, would be like monks, 
not men — Alcibiades with Aspasia. According to them, 
some woo the mistress and some woo the maid, but he 
woos both. Let us go back to a classic and heroic stand- 
ard. He was not willful, he was playful, gamboling or 
infantile. But this witness did not dare to speak, they 
say. Why not ? (he screamed out.) The witness was as 
safe, as if in Gibraltar with the whole British fleet out- 
side. 

To the libellant, may it please your Honor, the conse- 
quences of the decree are not ruinous. The love that lives 
once may live again. Some death-bed revelations of the 
false witness, some loss of relatives, the disciplines of 
Providence, may medicine his diseased and abused mind ; 
but to her there can be no return from a decree. It is 
death. 

CONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENT OF MR. CHOATE, 

Before a Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature, upon the tenure of the office of 
justice of the peace ; and against tlie removal, by address, of James G. Carter, Esq., 
from that office ; 5th Ajiril, 1S49. 

This case was a petition by certain citizens of Massa- 
chusetts for the removal of Mr. Carter from his office, by 
address of the Legislature. It was a case of novel impres- 
sion ; impeachment being the only mode generally under- 
stood, as applicable to remove an alleged judicial de- 
linquent. Mr. Choate made a close, grave and learned 
constitutional argument. Some portions of it are given 
here. It was reported phonographically. 

This proceeding has been carried so far, Mr. Chairman 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 395 

and gentlemen, that it seems necessary to the respondent to 
carry it somewhat fm'ther, and for that purpose to present 
his answer to the charges which are made, and to produce 
some portion of his testimony in opposition to them. Be- 
fore he does this, however, it seems to me to be his right 
and mine that I should submit a very few general consider- 
ations to the Committee upon the princii^le of the transac- 
tion in which we are engaged, and upon the actual posture 
of the proceeding itself as it now presents itself 

If I am not very much deceived, Mr. Chairman and 
gentlemen, in this matter, sober men, conservative men of 
all parties, and of whatever pre-occupation of mind against 
the respondent or his case, will agree with us that it is 
proper to pause, to heave the lead, to heed the compass, 
and to take the sun, if we can see it through the clouds, 
for an observation, before Ave attempt much further to 
push forward so new and so perilous a movement as this 
may be. 

I do not know how this has struck others, and I do not 
know how it would have struck myself if I had held a re- 
tainer upon a different side, but I must confess that I have 
noticed with astonishment this mode of removing an ofScr-r 
by address, instead of the old-fashioned, decent, if you 
please slow, but safe mode of impeachment. I regard it 
as a bad chanire — as a sis-n of the radical times in which 

o o 

we live. Perhaps some poAver exists in the Constitution. 
But I confess that I have supposed, if there was one axiom 
of our Constitution better appreciated than another by 
every man of whatever party, in the just and proper sense 
of the term, it was exactly this : that this power of re- 
moving by address is the most dangerous in the Constitu- 
tion — that it is altogether the most directly repugnant to 
our svstem of constitutional checks and balances, and that 



396 EEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHUATE. 

as a matter of course it was not intended to be resorted to 
except in very important cases — in cases whicli should com- 
mand the unanimous sense of the community, and even 
the sober second thought of the victim himself — that it 
should never be resorted to when it was in any degree in- 
volved in doubt, whether the person to be immediately 
affected by the action, or any one else, was within the reach 
of the constitutional provision for impeachment ; and, above 
all, never to be resorted to as a matter of elementary pro- 
cedure in any case when it could by any jjossibility reach 
an innocent person. 

I say to you, gentlemen, who are to represent the policy 
of this proceeding to the Legislature, I have always held 
this maxim ; and I must confess that I have never felt a 
more painful surprise than when I heard lately, from per- 
sons on whose opinion I have quite implicitly relied, that 
impeachment is not sufficient to reach this kind of case — • 
and that we would better take the shorter cut of address. 
I entreat you to confer a moment upon the case, before 
action. 

Let me say a word or two, first upon a narrow ground, 
and then upon a somewhat broader view of this great ques- 
tion, now for the first time to be presented to the delibera- 
tion of this Legislature. I submit to you, Mr. Chairman, 
— you who have so long and so ably assisted to administer 
justice in civil and criminal cases — I submit that as a mat- 
ter of right to the judicial officer, whose commission is 
sought to be taken from him, the proceedings should be 
as near an approach as possible to the judicial method of 
procedure which prevails in all constitutional cases affect- 
ing the rights of individuals. Without standing here to 
moot extreme cases, I conceive that it is sufficient for me 
to claim, and I have no doubt but that the learned counsel 



EE2IINISCENCES OF RUFUS CKOATE. 397 

on the opposite side will concede that the respondent has a 
sacred right in his office. Whether the commission be 
property or not, it is a sacred right, inasmuch as it pos- 
sesses a pecuniary value — inasmuch as he holds it as a proof 
of his judgment and capacity, and as a means of doing a 
])ublic sei'vice ; and inasmuch as, further, to dejirive him 
of it, is to disgrace him ; I submit that it is a quasi prop- 
erty. And I therefore submit that the forfeiter should be 
pronounced guilty, by as near an approximation to a judi- 
cial procedure as is known to the terms of the Consti- 
tution. 

1 have heard it said there is hope of a tree, if it be cut 
down, that it may spring up again — that its tender branches 
may again come forth to produce leaves and bear fruit ; but 
when the reputation of a man is dead, where is he ? 

I put it to you in the first place, with great confidence 
and great earnestness, that you are urged to deprive a citi- 
zen of a property — and that you should do it, if you siiould 
do it at all, by as near an approximation to the forms of 
a grave and judicial proceeding as the Constitution al- 
lows of 

In the next place, there is another reason why we should 
proceed against this man, and against every man, by the 
forms of law. And I expect on this also, not only the 
sanction of the Committee, but also the assent of my learned 
brother ; and that is, as against Mr. Carter, and against 
every one, it is really a case of the administration of crim- 
inal law ; and that also, in the universal manner in which 
criminals are tried — he should be tried judicially if he be 
tried at all. Now I do not mean to say that this power of 
address, necessarily, is an administration of criminal jus- 
tice. There may be, and there were expected to be, very 



398 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

many cases where a judicial officer may be removed by 
address. 

I have no doubt but that this Constitutional provision 
was intended to apply to the visitation of God — to lunacy, 
to superannuation, or to some other cause of a similar na- 
ture, without inflicting any pain upon the feelings of the 
party removed. Such an administration, without being an 
administration of criminal law, might be conducted so as 
to soothe the feelings of the party. It might be so done as 
to command his approbation. It might be attended by a 
very just panegyric for the long and faithful services of an 
illustrious individual ; and when thus administered, as it 
was undoubtedly intended to be administered, I do not mean 
to say that it is inappropriate. But when, as in this case, 
you intend to deprive a person of office, on the ground of 
a bad reputation, I put it to you that it is, in its intrinsic 
character, an administration of criminal law. And I do, 
therefore, submit that U2:>on that ground it ought to be 
conducted by impeachment, if it can be conducted by im- 
peachment, and by as near an approach to judicial pro- 
ceeding as the forms of the Constitution will allow. 

I submit that it is due to the officer and the man, that 
it should be so. I submit that it is due to the family, 
whose hearts must bleed when this is done. I submit that 
it is due to justice and to examj^le, and for the proper im- 
pression upon the community. 

Nobody will suppose — you, Mr. Chairman, who know 
me personally so well — no member of this Committee will 
suppose that I intend to intimate any disrespect to any of 
you, when I say that the forms of impeachment are better 
for the respondent than those of address. No forms are 
safer than those of impeachment. After a hearing by a 
Committee, when the impeachment has been voted for by 



I 



BEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 399 

one branch of the Legislature, another branch of the Leg- 
ishiturc is instantly, may I not say it ? elevated to a Court 
of Law ; another branch of the Legislature immediately 
divests itself of its Legislative character, and erects itself 
into a Court of Justice. The judicial oatli is taken — rules 
of practice — rules of evidence — a code of laws are emerged, 
and surround the party — a teiTor to evil doers — a protec- 
tion to honest men. Counsel are retained on one side and 
the other. The elaborate discussions of the bar take place. 
Grave deliberations are held. And in the lano-uasce of 
Burke, " that which is irreversible, is made, to be slow." 

We therefore gain one further advantage, in asking for 
Mr. Carter the impeachment. You will see that this af- 
fects his property, and his reputation — in the first place 
touching him in his pocket, and then in his good name. 
You ought to try liim according to Magna Charta, and by 
the Bill of Bights, rather than by this sudden proceeding. 
I have heard many persons say that an impeachment 
takes too much time. It is loadingr too much of a ffun for 
the game. Gentlemen, that would conduct us instantly to 
lynching. Suppose a man took a pistol and shot another 
dead m State street. Why should he not be taken to the 
Common, and hanged amidst the execrations of a hundred 
thousand spectators ? Because, perhaps he did not think 
his pistol loaded. Because, perhaps he was insane. Be- 
cause, perhaps his victim had purposely trod upon his foot 
— intentionally provoked and insulted hmi. For the sake 
of caring for human life — for the sake of turning this into 
a grave proceeding of State, although no human individual 
has doubts of his guilt, the counsel challenge the jurors, 
and plead his cause with eloquent words, and with the 
judgment of twelve of his peers and a full bench, ho takes 
his chance of escape. I submit that the same judgment 



400 REMINISCENCES OF KUEUS CUOATE. 

which allows us to give a fellow creature such an opportu- 
nity to escape, when he has committed a heinous crime ; 
should warrant us in furnishing equal justice to an officer 
whose reputation, dearer than life, is attacked. 

And now I may he permitted to say a word or two, as 
one of your constituents, upon this great question — for the 
main argument is with more propriety and ability to be 
developed by my learned associate — the power of the Legis- 
lature to remove the Judge by address. ^^ Sic volo, sic 
juhco, stet pro ratione voluntas," stands alone, an excep- 
tion to the independence of the Judiciary. The more I 
have reflected upon it, the more does this strike me. I 
suppose that we agree that the one grand peculiarity of 
our system of government — the one grand fundamental 
doctrine of constitutional liberty — the great primitive gran- 
ite foundation of it all, is, that the three great dej)artments 
of the Government shall be entirely independent each of 
the other ; and that in a sj)ecial manner, the Judiciary shall 
be independent not merely of the crown, but of that power 
behind the throne, so much greater than the throne, the 
Legislature. I suppose, sir, there is not the least extrava- 
gance in saying that this principle is the one foundation 
and granite principle upon which our Constitution is built. 
I suppose that there is no extravagance in saying that the 
one great princij^le of English liberty obtained in 1688, was 
exactly this— that for the first time, it made the English 
Judge independent of the crown. Let any man refresh his 
studies of our glorious Literature of Liberty — let him go 
back to 1780 and 1789, when our Constitutions were de- 
bated and adopted — let him read Mr. Adams' history of 
the debates in the several conventions, and the papers of 
Jefferson and Madison, and he will find that these three 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 401 



great ideas possessed the universal American mind : first, 
that the three departments of Government should be kept 
distinct ; secondly, that the Judiciary should be made 
independent ; and thirdly, wliile most persons entertained 
a very unreflecting dread of Executive power, the wisest 
and best of our fathers anticipated that morbid develop- 
ment of the power of the Legislature, which should thrust 
down the Judiciary below it. 



It is u})(m that principle, you know very well, Mr. 
Chairman and Gentlemen, that our own State Constitution 
has been organized. And I never read without a thrill of 
sublimity the concluding article of the Bill of Eights, in 
which it is promulgated. 

" In the Government of this Commonwealth, the Lesis- 
lative department shall never exercise the Executive and 
Judicial powers, or either of them ; the Executive shall 
never exercise the Legislative and Judicial powers, or either 
of them ; the Judicial shall never exercise the Legislative 
and Executive powers, or either of them : to the end that 
it may be a Government of laws, and not of men." 

The language is borrowed immediately from Harring- 
ton, who says he bon'owed from Livy. 

I remember a story of a person who said that he could 
read Paradise Lost without its affecting him at all, but 
that there was a passage at the end of Newton's Optics, 
which made his flesh creep and his hair stand on end. I 
confess that I never read that article of the Constitution 
without feeling the same : " to the end that it may be a 
Government of laws and not of men." 

It must have struck every one with surjorise, that in 
our Constitution there should be found a power authoris- 
ing the Legislature, without one particle of notice, to take 



402 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

the Chief Justice out of his seat in a single hour. It struck 
me a little as it would those who translated King James' 
Bible, if the word " not" in the seventh commandment 
had been omitted as unnecessary. 

This ' power must have been intended only for a few 
palpable cases — cases of insanity — lunacy — superannuation 
— or for a few unknown cases, which no human wisdom 
could foresee, in which, when they come, the universal assent 
of the community is instantly commanded to the re- 
moval — as if the Judge, sir, should, as is stated in the old 
books of religious devotion, be left to the commission of 
crime so indisputable, and so transcendant, that the uni- 
versal community, his friends — himself, if he could be 
heard to speak, would demand an instant removal. If 
there remained a particle of doubt, it should not be done — 
the power of the Legislature should not be used. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I have somewhat re- 
flected upon the limitations under which this power should 
be presented. Under these limits, held up thus, and with 
these restrictions, it may be reconciled, as otherwise it could 
not be, to the general 23rinciples of a great system of Con- 
stitutional checks and balances. But the very instant you 
set an example of going beyond, — permit me to say to you 
— some of you personal friends — and all of you, whom I 
entirely respect — you set an example which, probably, is 
fatal to the Constitution. He whom the providence of 
God elevates in such a way, that his acts has bad conse- 
quences, he is justly deemed responsible ; but the act which 
his example sets may be much more injurious. You are 
good men, and live in good times ; but you set an ex- 
ample for bad men in bad times. 

It seems to me, then, that it is a duty of very great 



KEMimSCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 403 

importance that this power is not strained and perverted, 
and I hope that we shall find historically, and according to 
the spirit of a statesman, and in the terms and language of 
a statesman, embodied in the report of this Committee, the 
true doctrine of the limitations of this tremendous power. 
Let us trace it up — show how it was inadvertently intro- 
duced into the Constitution by the framers — show how it 
is always to be held in subordination to the principles of 
the Constitution — how there are rare cases to which it may 
be applied, and thus j^urge the mind of the Government and 
of the country of that pernicious and novel generality 
Avhich seems to me to leave no man any security at all for 
any thing that he holds, or any thing that he owns. In its 
nature it is vague — in its nature unfriendly to the inde- 
j)endence of the Judiciary — in its nature it leads to a morbid 
enlargement of Legislative power. I submit that it is your 
duty to be quite sure that you apply it to no person, and 
to no thing, in any doubtful case, whether or not it is in 
the original intention. 

If a case be doubtful, I pray your judgment, and I feel 
no manner of doubt as to the result. If the case be doubt- 
ful — whether it applies to the Judge — whether it applies 
to the description of matter with which he stands charged 
— if it be doubtful ; for God's sake, throw into the scale 
the great principle of tlie Constitution — which is the inde- 
pendence of the Judiciary. That great doubt you can not 
escape. 

I submit, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, that true 
policy would ad\ase us to lock up the " extreme medicine" 
till the attack of the alarming malady. " True wisdom 
would advise us to jjlace such a power rather in the back- 
ground,'' as the great Burke has said, " and to throw over 
it the well- wrought veil of obscurity, reserving it for the 



404 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

emergency/' The power is here. Let it be preserved. It 
should be kept in the inmost recesses of the Constitution. 
Keep it in that dark vault, as in tlie case of the Gothic 
king, lighted only by a single candle. Keep it till some 
great complication arises which it requires a divinity to 
disentangle. That is a precept of importance. 

Leaving these two general considerations — during the 
presentation of which I had forgotten that I was an advo- 
cate, and had recurred to the first principles by which my 
dreaming manhood was charmed — I submit that this power 
of removal does not apply to a Justice of the Peace at all. 
And I suppose that these remarks will not be considered 
far-fetched wdien we come to examine the Constitution. 

But before turning to the Book of political life, let me 
propound to the lawyers of this board this rule of interpre- 
tation ; the rule is this, that as the power of removing by 
the Legislature is the exceptional case — not the general 
rule — as it is confessedly a departure from the general 
spirit of our system of constitutional checks and balances 
— as it weakens the Judiciary, and gives a vast expansion 
to the power of the Legislature ; the Constitution is to be 
strictly construed — What do you say to that, Mr. Chan- 
man ? — and not to be extended beyond the clear, plain, 
obvious interpretation of its terms, and some plain signifi- 
cation of its meaning. I stand on that, to the last gasp of 
my life. 

Let us see, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen ; and I now 
respectfully ask your attention to an argument somewhat 
carefully written out, because I could not trust myself to 
the using of so much of your time as an extemporaneous 
delivery might occasion, or to presenting in a popular form 
what I wish to be a close constitutional argument. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 405 

In reading the Bill of Rights, we must always begin 
with Magna Charta. And I think that a good deal of 
light in this connection will be thrown upon this clause of 
the Constitution, if you will allow me to carry you back 
to the glorious Act of Settlement, in 1688. Our ancestors 
boiTowed their doctrines from that great history of the Con- 
stitution of England. We have that history in Hallam, 
and also detailed by the popular historians. The Act of 
Settlement of William and Mary made the Judge inde- 
pendent of the king. The article is in these beautiful 
terms — these are the exact terms : 

" That after the said limitation of the crown shall take 
effect the salaries shall be made, " Quamdiu se bene ges- 
serint." But on the application of both Houses of Parlia- 
ment, it may be lawful to remove.-'' The King gave to his 
ftiithful Commons an independent Judge. And the Com- 
mons too, ingi-afted it in the Constitution, that he might 
be removed." 

Mr. Park, the opposing counsel. — " These are the 
Judges." 

Mr. Choate. — I rather guess that Judicial officers mean 
Judges — I should like to see another Judicial officer. 
" Airs from heaven or blasts from hell," where is he ? 

Now, Mr. Chahman, this is the very first appearance of 
the right, and it comes in there, as it comes in here — a lim- 
itation on the tenm'e for life. " We buy," as Burke says, 
"all our blessings of liberty with a price." Here was a 
privilege granted to all the Judiciary, but the exception 
was made to it. There was an independent Judiciary in 
the term for life. But that independence cost mankind 
too much. And although, to the Constitutional reasoner, 

* Vol. IV. Book IX. Chap. III. 



406 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

there lias come to be nothing so formidable presented, as 
the power of the Legislature to take the Judge from the 
bench precisely when the obnoxious law is to be presented 
to the Judiciary for their consideration ; yet it is necessary 
that that transcendent tenure, so far above the general 
analogies of Republican Liberty, should be subject to that 
one control. But in the case of Justices of the Peace, why 
should the power be given, when a cheaper substitute can 
be obtained ? I say then they did not mean to extend it 
any further. 

I do not believe that we should exercise this power, 
and I apprehend, that before we can come to another con- 
clusion, we shall have to read our history backwards, as 
the witches were said to have read their Bibles. 

There are one or two other considerations. I am here, 
as a very great Englishman has said, "not with books with 
the leaves doubled down, to speak for technical principles, 
nor to defend a client merely, but I stand here on an im- 
portant and cherished principle of Constitutional Liberty." 

This is the first time of taking up an extraordinary 
and mystical passage of the Constitution, and putting a 
construction on it. The other side argues here from anal- 
ogy. They say, if the great Judge may be taken, the lit- 
tle Judge may be taken of course. The question is, wliat 
sort of a power it is that takes great men. I suppose that 
the Legislature had a great power, because the great 
Judges had the great tenure. 

'■'■ Extremum liunc Arethusa milii concede lahorem." 

They do not obtain the power in the first article. 
They do not obtain it at all. It is not the principle that 
the little Judge may be taken as well as the great Judge. 
But it is a bad habit to take any Judge. It is a danger- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 407 

ous, debauching power— an exception— a transcendentality, 
to take any Judge. And he is a wise man and a lover of 
his country, who can provide a substitute for a power 
which we are all but too much inclined " to roll as a sweet 
morsel under the tongue." 

Now, Mr. Chairman, it is perhaps partly from the in- 
fluences of professional life, — I hope that my brother will 
agree with me in this — that I feel that the power to re- 
move from tliis office on a ground like this, is so large — so 
irresistible by itself— so tempting in its exercise — so potent 
to enlarge morbidly the sphere of Legislative power, that I 
can scarcely conceive of a case in which a sober Legislator 
w^ould permit himself to entertain an application like this. 
I do say, that such a state of fiicts, as arc here presented 
as the basis for invoking the action of the Legislature, is 
in the last degree monstrous. 

When you consider, gentlemen, that the Judicial office 
is in itself intrinsically objectionable — when you consider 
that the country Magistrate, especially one who, in a 
divided state of opinion, administers an obnoxious law 
firmly, is almost necessarily unpopular — when you con- 
sider that every man, who is bound over by the Magistrate 
to keep the peace, for selling liquor, or for other action in 
opposition to an obnoxious law, becomes his enemy for life 
— when you consider that this kind of enmity finds out, by 
a kind of magnetic and electric certainty, everybody that 
has been offended by his particular action — finds out every- 
body that has been set aside by his success — when you con- 
sider that slander spares neither age nor sex, and that in 
one of his last letters, George Washington complains that 
he had been spoken of in terms not inapplicable to a pick- 
pocket — when you consider how easy it is for an individual 



408 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

to furnish an excuse to strike an individual's cliaractcr 
dead — it is proper that you should pause to find some 
principle by which this jurisdiction is taken. 

When I remember that in spite of horse-guards and 
other obstacles, the attempt was made to destroy one of 
the most illustrious of men, in the 80th year of his life— 
when I remember how many went to their graves believing 
Junius to be a relentless Scotchman — when I remember 
that one of my own profession, in a neighboring county, 
was persecuted by some of my fellow-creatures to the verge 
of his grave — when I remember (I need not go back so far) 
how Athens gave the cup of poison to the wisest of men, 
I need not try to bring to your minds the great, the op- 
pressive, the dangerous power which is given by the Legis- 
lature against my client. You give Mr. Withington and 
his associates power to send for persons and papers. You 
offer a premium on slander ! Scandal is paid for. Grudges, 
which have slept for twenty years, are unearthed, and borne 
down on the railroads by cart-loads. And my client's 
mouth is shut as if he were dead. For what cause is this ? 
He is attacked as if he were barely a fellow-creature, tried 
for sheep-stealing, with a general ransack of twenty-five 
years of an active, sometimes unpopular, but, thank God, 
he has that which can not be destroyed, a useful public 
and private life. What a result ! These are no bad rea- 
sons, but excellent reasons for seeking for a rule. You are 
men of honor. You do not understand that you have 
jurisdiction over this case. If the magistrate is brought 
before you, with him you deal. The magistrate can be 
tried. What, then, is the rule .? I entreat you to take it 
from me, for consideration and adoption. And I put it to 
the universal manhood of Massachusetts, that it is correct, 
that if the case before you is such that the magistrate has 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 409 

performed his official duties with uniform fidelity— if no 
act of official malversation can be fastened upon him by 
the utmost intensity of slander and mahce, (and if there 
can be, it is to be the subject of impeachment,)— then 
clearly, unless the character of the party becomes such that 
the mao-istrate, as such, is destroyed— unless the private 
man kills the Justice of the Peace— unless it becomes such 
that the sentiment of good and wise men, with a substan- 
tial universality is, that he is unfit to be a magistrate— 
tliat in his hands the law can not be administered, and the 
police can not be maintained— that the respect and fear of 
law is overcome and vanquished by his participation in it— 
when the private character, in other words, ajjpears to have 
destroyed the capacity of the Judge, there is no case for 
you. 

Supi)ose it had been shown here that the good of Lan- 
caster—suppose it had been shown here that the wise and 
good men of Worcester county, anxious to administer the 
criminal law, could not bring criminal cases before him— 
suppose that they had come to feel that he was a man so 

licentious that there was no certainty what he would do 

no certainty that he would not acquit the guilty and con- 
demn the innocent : and that whether he acquitted or con- 
victed, no moral sanction followed; and tliat they felt 
therefore that they could not bring their cases before him, 
it might be proper to remove him. But on the other hand, 
before we have offered a particle of testimony, the slanders 
of three and twenty years of an active life are let loose upon 
him ; his mouth is shut, instead of making his defense at 
the bar, a chained and silenced man. And at the end of 
such an examination as this, there is only a divided senti- 
ment about one phase of his private character. When it 
appears at the end of such an inquisition that his position 

IS 



410 KEMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS ClIOATE. 

in private life is elevated — tliat his associates are of the 
highest character — that he stands unsuspected of vice, of 
intemperance, of unchastity, of profaneness, of breach of 
law ; when he stands a scrupulous observer of every pro- 
priety and of every ordinance that good men love and 
respect ; when such an inquisition shows that his good 
magistracy and fairness are admitted by all but one man — 
one Mr. Thurston ; when he is tlie only one of all the Jus- 
tices of the Peace before whom the temperance men come ; 
I ask you to consider that when he has had three or four 
business transactions, and has come out of them, his ene- 
mies thinking him dishonest and he thinking them dis- 
lionest ; and then there has followed all those bitter, 
resentful, and malevolent feelings which have been 
exhibited ; and the result before you, in his own town, 
is, only a divided opinion in one village, a sentiment 
against him in another, and a clear sentiment in his favor 
in a third ; I submit without disresjiect towards any of 
the Committee, that it is just as barbarous, and just as 
unconstitutional, and just as absurd to say that he should 
be removed from liis position on this account, as to say 
that because lie is not six feet in his shoes, and begins to 
be decidedly bald on the top of his liead, he shoukl be 
hanged. Exactly ! Exactly ! 

On the director of the bank — on the deacon of the 
churcli — on the guiirdian of children — on the librarian 
of a society — you have not the power to lay the weight 
of your hand. But the Magistrate, as was eloquently said 
in the other branch of the Legislature [th(.- Senate,] some 
years ago, "his countenance, you may change and send 
him away." 

But the trustee of the bank, the guardian, the libra- 
rian, the deacon, you can not touch. And imless the 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 411 

guardian, the librarian, tlie trustee, and the deacon, 
have destroyed the Justice of the Peace, you will send 
him home unscathed. I respectfully submit that that 
is the true position of the case. 

Remember Lord Ashburton, the glory of the bar, who 
said, " Let us be silent when these illustrious men may 
speak by the codes which are their monuments, and their 
unblemished lives." The Legislature should be the last 
place for slander to be nourished. Private character should 
be safe there. Leave it to the newspapers, and not to the 
best ones, either. Expect the best newspapers to stand by 
private character. Strike the magistrate dead ; hold an 
inquest over him, and lay him out — the magistrate, you 
may order him to be buried. 

And now I come, under this view of the rule, to state 
exactly what I regard Mr. Carter's case to be. I will ex- 
tenuate nothing. And I do not believe my brother will 
expect that " aught should be set down in malice." I deal 
with the case of a man who may have made mistakes. But 
I think that the Magistrate should be marked for sterling 
worth. I could wish that all could stand up and give as 
good an account as he can on a trial of twenty-two years 
of life. — Mr. C. then discussed the details of the evidence. 

THE CRAFTS CASE, 

This was a case where it was alleged that a vessel was 
cast away on the beach of Cape Cod by the captain, in col- 
lusion with her owner, Mr. Crafts, to obtain the insurance. 
One Wilson was the chief witness for the Grovermnent. 
He turned States' evidence, and swore that there was such 
a conspiracy. He coiToborated it by some signatures of 
Crafts, which the defense denied were ever signed to such 
documents. The great object of Mr. Choate's arguments 



412 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C 110 ATE. 

was to show that Wilson was uureliable and a knave. 
During the trial he had subjected him to a very long, 
minute, and severe cross-examination, under which the 
witness had not apj)eared well, and which showed his life 
to have been generally of very doubtful character. The 
following extracts I wrote down at the time of the argu- 
ment. 

Mr. Choate commenced by reminding the Jury that this 
defendant was a business man of good character, who now 
stood in peril of his character, his honor — all. Any of you 
might be in the same situation. Suspicions are excited 
from some cause when yonr ship goes to pieces ; yon are 
examined in preliminary hearings, where not one word is 
said in defense, but all evidence tending to inculpate is 
j)roduced ; another Wilson — ;/ the government could jind 
another Wilson — is put upon the stand, declaring him- 
self a villain, and you his comrade in the villainy ; and 
thus you stand condemned without a hearing. 

The presumption of innocence he then alluded to. " It 
is equal to one good witness," he said. " It attends this 
prisoner like a guardian angel." 

The character of the crime was then considered ; so 
rare, so dangerous in its execution, — to lay the bones of a 
ship upon a beach in a storm — so liable to detection ; rarer 
of occurrence even than Treason. 

The previous unimpeachable character of the defend- 
ant, evidenced by fifty-nine witnesses. The defendant had 
no earthly motive for such a deed ; the captain had no 
motive. The charge was sustained, he said, by two parcels 
of evidence — Wilson, and the papers of Wilson. 

Wilson is a discredited witness. But the great law prin- 
ciple, founded on the best experience of humanity, declares, 
that even when a States' witness appears most favorably, 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 413 

still he must be corroborated. Why ? Because his story 
is iutiuenced necessarily by liopc or fear ; and in a man's 
own confession of guilt even, if those motives appear to 
have been used, the confession is rejected. 

Now here is this Wilson skulking about, and lying 
concealed after the vessel went to i)ieces, the perspiration 
bathing his brow at every knock. This agony continued 
till flesh and blood could stand it no longer. He has every 
motive to tell a story to the Government, which, by incul- 
pating another, may clear him — as the droAvning man 
struggles for that last plank with his brother, in the mid- 
ocean, which will hold but one. Having first told this, he 
must swear to it. The theory of its reception at all is that 
witness is penitent. But if he be corroborated, no corrob- 
oration will render reliable the testimony of a man whose 
whole life is shown to be so black — to whom cheating and 
lies have been always familiar — who would have charged 
the firm of Dame & Kaymond with this guilt had he pos- 
sessed any signature of theirs. If his story were to be be- 
lieved, no one of us is secure. We must fly each other as 
from the avenger of blood. 

Again, (the advocate said,) he has perjured himself 
seven times on the stand. You saw it in his manner. 
Was it grave, contrite, the tears and the truth delivered 
together '? No, nothing of the kind. 

Then his matter, also. Was that upon its face like 
truth .? 

He gives a mass of unimportant truths, but interwoven 
with the truth, inwoven with the texture, running all 
through it, is the scarlet tissue of falsehood. It is the drug 
that poisons the whole cup. 

He put a humorous supposition in illustration of a 
false witness mixing true with f\xlse ; — If a man among the 



414 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

audience picked a purse from a pocket among you, (the 
audience will pardon the supposition,) and to clear himself 
should offer to swear that he was prompted by a professor 
of Harvard, he could tell accurately the position of things 
even to tliat oar upon the wall. Gentlemen of the jury, 
which hits the Marshal's head ; suspended there in token 
of our maritime jurisdiction. Every thing immaterial 
would be all right ; every thing material, false. 

No man of woman born is to be convicted on such evi- 
dence. By such testimony the greatest of the heathen fell. 
By such evidence England and Ireland and France were 
deluged by the blood of more than one Keign of Terror. 

See how convenient his memory is. He tells you this 
story down to just the point he wishes, then his memory, 
accurate thus far, breaks down — is suddenly jiaralyzed ; 
he can't remember any more ! But these events of which 
he is speaking are connected inseparably by a law of asso- 
ciation of ideas ; he can not remember one without the 
other ; any more than he could remember that he saw one 
side of Captain. Smith and not the other. 

It is a great privilege that the government must pirove 
their case — a privilege so ancient and admirable. It is in 
the Constitution of Massachusetts. It is in the Federal 
Constitution. 

But they bring witnesses who now, knowing that the 
ship loas lost, say that, looking at the facts, the observa- 
tions on the ship, the reckoning, etc., the captain could 
not honestly have been so deceived as he was, in regard to 
the actual position of his vessel. And I suppose if the 
philanthropy of two hemispheres shall find only the grave 
in which Sir John Franklin's body has warmed a place, 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 415 

every coxcomb clerk will pass an opinion, judging by after 
facts, and say p7^ecis€hj where the error in judgment was. 
But he was as good a Captain as ever walked between stem 
and stern ; and I say he teas deceived, utterly deceived, as 
to the lay of his craft. 

Wilson has told us where he takes his afternoon conso- 
lations (drinks). He has told us his barbarous, his atro- 
cious storv. He has contradicted himself again and again. 
Why d<m't he pay back the moneys he has ill-got ? He 
is so much of a villain that he wouldn't if he could, and so 
much of a bankrupt that he couldn't if he would. From 
one of his vices, gentlemen, learn all. 

The Virtues, like the Grraces, gi'ow and go together. 

On that alleged birthday of tlio consi)iracy, where was 
this Captain ? That flag waved over him, from under 
which, now, thank God, no sailor sliall ever be taken 
more ! 

Mr. Choate got a great laugh at the expense of Mr. 
Kobert Rantoul, the U. S. District Attorney, while com- 
menting on the hesitancy of Wilson to say how he came to 
be a State's witness — how he got into communication with 
the government at all. "My brother Eantoul," said he, 
" told this rascal what to say." Rantoul sprang to his feet, 
inquiring if he meant to charge him with instigating the 
witness to speak falsely ? "No," burst out Choate, "you 
told him, to speak the tndh ; and I saw you do it !" 

Now, this Wilson is wholly uncorroborated and dis- 
credited. I brand him a vagabond and a villain. The// 
brought Mm to curse, and behold he hath blessed us cdto- 
getlier ! 



416 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

" And now, Wilson being out of tlie case, as" (glanc- 
ing his fiery eyes round uj^on the stolid witness, who sat 
near the District Attorney,) "he ought to be out of the 
Court House, — we will consider what proofs remain to be 
discussed. 

CAPTAIN martin's CASE. MaT, 1850. 

[I Lave preserved a few of Mr. Clioatc's opening words in the .argument in Captain Mar- 
tin's case, wliere be also was iudictod for casting away bis vessel to obtain the insur- 
ance.] 

All that this defendant has suffered, gentlemen, is 
nothing to what follows a conviction ; yet if he could have 
anticipated the first, he would have prayed to die. 

Try this case, not by vulgar and newspaj)er and street 
corner talk, but by the evidence actually in, as you would 
wish your sailor boy son to be tried ; and, my life for his, 
he goes free. I pledge you my honor, I have no other wish 
than to try the case on its legal and fliir face. The untir- 
ing patience. Gentlemen of the jury, you have manifested, 
I shall rely on to the close. 

The presumption of innocence is a witness for the pris- 
oner. It goes with every parcel of evidence you examine. 
It is so with any one, especially with one of the char- 
acter proved by this man. Far different is the benevolence 
of the law, from the vulgar recklessness with which sus- 
2oicions are caught at as certainty. 

application for a railroad BETWEEN SOUTH DEDHAM 

AND BOSTON. 

[Extracts from the speecli of Tlonorable Rufiis Clioatc l)eforo a Lonislative Committee, 
Boston, March '20, ISoO ; from I'lionographic report by Dr. James W. Stone.] 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, — I hope I shall be 
thought guilty of no extravagance when I say so, — we 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CIIOATE. 417 

afford to this Committee and to this Legislature what a 
great English orator once called in Parliament "a fatal 
and critical opportunity of glory." A juncture in the in- 
dustrial and public fortunes and conditions of Massachu- 
setts, has palpably arrived, and is passing away. " There 
is a tide in the aifairs of" State, "which taken at the flood 
leads on to fortune." It is in your reason and your equity 
to say if that tide is not at this moment rising fast and 
strong and soon to be away. 

What is exactly the proposition that we bring before 
you ? The general character of the proposal, and the gen- 
eral reason for it, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, is this. I 
entreat your attention to a large, and not too large, but 
only an adequate apprehension of it in its general character, 
and upon the general reason that it rests upon. It is ex- 
actly this ; and I mean only to speak the words of truth 
and soberness in announcins; and maintainins; it. Its gen- 
eral character is, that it is a work towards the completion 
of railroads through the county of Norfolk to the Hudson 
river, to the shores of Lake Erie, a line of six hundred 
miles, and then to the upper Mississippi, a line of 
eleven hundred miles. This is the general character of 
the proposal, and this in a general way is what we re- 
spectfully ask your aid to do ; that is, to undertake a work 
intended to complete the railroad communication from Bos- 
ton to the uncounted wealth of the West, and leading by 
probable tendency to such completeness ; not certainly, sir 
(nobody pretends to speak so extravagantly) ; but we ask 
you to extend your hands from Boston to the waters of tlie 
West in furtherance of a jjlaii leading to consummation b.y 
2)rohahle tendency. 

To ask you to undertake so magnificent an enterprise 



418 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

were no doubt a dazzling nnd a too formidable proposal. 
But I entreat you to take it with you that the pecu- 
liarity of this is, that you are not asked to build the 
wide arch of the range, but only to insert the keystone ; 
nay, not so much as that ! not to do that, but only 
to set off by metes and bounds the right place for the 
buttress to be laid, on which one end of it may repose 
for ever. 

You, therefore, see by what grand peculiarities it is 
recommended. We ask you to do, no doubt, an act which 
is to yield a vast and most incalculable amount of public 
good, but which will certainly yield a series of minor, and 
yet great benefits, at every step that we take. We ask you 
then to take part in a great work undoubtedly, but it is 
not the building of an edifice, every story of which must 
be completed to the roof and to the attic, or else all will 
be useless. It is more like reclaiming a whole country to 
cultivation, where, if all is not done, every successful acre 
that is plowed, yields its own peculiar harvest, and insures 
a certain gain. Such, in a general way, is the nature of 
the proposal which we bring to the notice of the Commit- 
tee to-day. 

And now, in coming to the consideration of this subject, 
I believe, sir, that I may spare myself a great deal of 
trouble by taking it for granted that if what we ask to 
have done would secure, or would go by probable tendency 
to secure a railroad free and untrammeled to the shores of 
the Erie, or to the shores of the Hudson, or only to Bristol 
itself, — if that which we j^ropose will go by a reasonable 
and probable tendency to secure this result, and if it 
is also shown that what we ask is necessary to secure 
this, and that it will not be had to a reasonable prob- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 419 

ability without it, you would grant it as a matter of 
course. 

Of mere area, — let me say in advance, — for a vessel to 
lie at anchor, you have enough for a thousand years of the 
empire of trade. And for the ten thousand masts of your 
improved commerce, I shall ask whether it is not the true 
policy of your navigating interest, to barter a few acres of 
their line to render the j)roductions of the West more 
readily brought to our harbor, to cast, as in the customs of 
Venice, its treasures into the lap of our undiminished com- 
merce ? 

I have barely indicated the answer that I mean to give 
to them, and, I repeat, tliat with a lino of that description 
— all that can be expected of you is this only. I wish I 
could take you with the respect that is due from a constitu- 
ent to his representatives, by the hand, and ask you whether 
the difficulties you are laboring under are not these. The 
question is this : will this road contribute by any proba- 
ble tendency, to a road extending as far as Erie, or even to 
the Hudson, or even to Bristol ? Or will it in a larger 
consideration assist such a tendency ? To these two topics 
I mean very briefly to address myself 

I do not propose, although this is a dazzling topic, to 
detain you a moment on a display of the importance of this 
new railway connection to Erie, and from thence to the 
West. The prospect is flattering, but it is too easy for us, 
and too easy and too plain. All that, I take for granted. 
And instead of indulging me with declamation for two 
minutes, you desire that I should advance at once to the 
question, whether or not the little thing that we ask will 
not reasonably tend to give the connection desired, and 
whether it is necessary. 



420 REMINISCENCES OF RUEUS C HO ATE. 

It would be of course agreeable to pause for a moment. 
I should be glad to follow my friend wlio lias been speak- 
ins: on the wrong side, asrainst the tenor of his whole leir- 
islative experience [laughter] ; but as a Massachusetts law- 
yer and a Massachusetts citizen, speaking to public men on 
the important connection of this harbor with the uncounted 
wealth of the West, let us leave that for the Commencement 
performers (and you and I, Mr. Chairman, remember them 
a good many years ago), to give their fancy declamations 
about it. It would be an object for Massachusetts, by the 
side of which all other industrial objects fade and fail, 
to open a communication with the West, not to super- 
sede the great Western Kailroad, — Grod forbid that we 
should come in competition with that ! — but along the 
whole width of crowded and western Connecticut. I 
thought my learned brother would take the butter out of 
my mouth. Why, Ave should give hiui butter enough to 
win even his assistance. Tlie great amount of agricultural 
products ! nobody is even now behind his head to call it in 
question ; I wish I could raise doubt enough to call that 
in question of which my heart is full. [Sensation.] Strange 
indeed if in this State House, in this Senate Chamber, 
among these immortal records of this policy m this behalf 
— ^liere in this Senate Chamber, where the sobriety and 
wisdom of Massachusetts have for so many years declared, 
by a series of public and practical actions, that what the 
industrial interests of Massachusetts demand as the indis- 
pensable coadjutor of her progress, demand and prescribe, 
is the most multiplied and easy connection with the West 
— strange indeed if that should be refused. Those inter- 
ests demand and prescribe that she must have an interior, 
or stop short of her manifest destiny ! and as nature has 
not given her a water power, and as her art must build it, 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 421 

it would be strange indeed if upon this floor, Ly this Leg- 
islature, a proposal to add another tie between the East 
and the West should be heard with disfavor, or any thing 
but the most anxious and solicitous desire on the part of 
the lawgivers to forward and assist it by every means in 
their power. 

It is not a dream of enthusiasm. And let me remind 
you there is but one more tie to be made. For such ties 
we go, as the settled policy of this State, as a matter of 
course. Timidity may doubt. Procrastination may think 
it is too early. Simplicity may lift up its hands and say it 
is too good to be true. Credulity may shrug shoulders 
and lift eyebrows at the vastness of the idea ; but it is too 
late to tell the Statesmen of Massachusetts that any thing 
is beyond her means, or energy, or daring, for the sake of 
her recognized interests. We stand here in behalf of in- 
strumentalities for her benefit. There can be no running 
a parallel of contrast between these connections on account 
of distance ; as if a hundred thousand accommodations did 
not make up for the difference in distance. 

I can only attribute the argument of the learned gen- 
tleman, — })rompted I know not by what, except by Ids 
salary, and I hope it is quite ample, [laughter,] — to the 
necessity of his case. 

" Nitor in adversitm" — contention with difficulties — 
is the motto of our State. 

If, therefore, Mr. Chairman, — if you will pardon me for 
having detained you so long, I promise you that I will not 
detain you half as long on any subject which is half so easy 
and half so showy as this — if there is any road presented, 
do not hold us to a demonstration. No good policy is pre- 
sented, which can be positively demonstrated to you, who 



422 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

hold the administration of this State to-day. And if there 
is presented to a Massachusetts LegisLatiire an immediate 
connection with the heart of the upper valley of the West, 
it will be ap2:)reciated by you, that it deserves the greatest 
solicitude and the highest favor ; and I feel that you will 
be in no degree in danger of being turned aside by my 
brother's subterranean road, five feet under the marshes ; 
I shall not fear that you will be turned aside either by epi- 
cureanism or by philosophy — falsely so called — from look- 
ing it full in the face. Will you look at it with the same 
degree of care with which the Roman Senate used to 
receive and act on, for so many hundred years, every pro- 
posal, every chance, every pretext of annexing to her do- 
mains another province, wherever it offered itself, in Persia, 
or in Britain ? A long, deep policy, transmitted from gen- 
eration to generation, according to maxims, durable in her 
case, but not founded, as in this instance, or an innocent 
wisdom ! 

Now, sir, we offer you a railroad of this character, and 
it is not by a few phrases about magnificence, that we are 
to be driven from it. It was not by such phrases that the 
Western Railroad was built or prevented. We offer you, 
in its largest form, a new communication. In its grandest 
form it is every thing that I have stated. What is this 
that is too big for our grasp ? It sets off from the waters 
of this harbor, from the foot of Summer street in this city. 
If we are not to bridge the waters of that harbor, it sets off 
from South Boston. In three miles it reaches a line of 
railroad which is chartered this day to Chicago, eleven 
hundred and fifty miles, from whence it is attached by 
canal to the Upper Mississijipi. It crosses thousands of 
miles of other railroads, eleven hundred and forty-one miles 
of which are in operation ; canals, a great many ; rivers, 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 423 

more than I can number, none of them on this side of 
what I may call our own Hudson. It traverses Connecti- 
cut and the rich counties of New York, takes in some of 
the counties of Pennsylvania, stretches along the shore 
of the lakes, connects with the valley of the Ohio, and 
when it has arrived at Chicago by the lake, the canal and 
the Illinois, it is in the center of the West, and the shaft 
has reached tire bottom of the mine of virgin coal. 

Three miles of new charter, fourteen miles of new road, 
are all that we ask. We build it ourselves. There are 
circumstances at work, which, by a probable tendency, en- 
sure its completion. We can guarantee for nothing beyond 
this. We are victims of a great error, if we are refused. 
But if the charter and the road will produce this result 
naturally, w^e ask you to grant them. 

Thus far I consider myself to have done nothing but re- 
peat the merest commonplace in the w^orld. And I have 
only to beg your pardon for the time taken, and to advance 
to the real question in this case, and that is this : Will 
the establishment of the road from Thompson to come to 
Boston, contribute appreciably and probably to this or any 
important part of this series of public good ? That is the 
whole question. AVill it probably do so much towards it 
that the little we ask of you in order to effect it ought for 
a moment to be withheld ? 

Now, gentlemen, I submit, iirst, (for we now come to 
that which is debatable, and that which is decisive if we 
maintain it,) that the road from Erie to the Hudson will 
be probably completed within eighteen months. The flood 
will be running this way within eighteen months. The 
road from Erie to the Hudson is no dream of an enthu- 
siast ; he is the wisest man and that is the wisest State, 



424 llEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

which shall be that day with its "lamps trimmed, burn- 
ing, and full of oil," to meet it. Mr. Chairman, "hear me 
for my cause" on this subject. They go about the streets 
to say this is a dream, but many ignoramuses don't know. 
It is a great way off. They don't know as there is such a 
place as Dunkirk. Not being charged with a great and 
solemn duty, they do not know and they do not investigate. 
Now, sir, prohability is all that we can be required to 
furnish. Of that there is certainly enough, and so much 
we do clearly lay before you. 

And now I have most earnestly to request your atten- 
tion to a proof of the detail. Here the probabilities are to 
guide us. I respectfully, as one of your constituents, hold 
you up probabilities. If I can show a probable case, I 
believe that I charge you with a duty ; or rather I have the 
infinite pleasure of laying before you an opportunity of 
wearing a high official honor. 

The earth has bubbles as the water has. As soon as 
that plan of the Air Line Railroad had subsided, Hartford 
resumed the purpose of putting out her arm, and from that 
time to this, its government conducted every single step 
with a strict reference to the Erie road on the one side, and 
the Boston terminus on the other. Hartford set to Avork, 
raised $120,000 of money, put out one of her hands east, 
and another fifty miles west towards the Hudson. And 
there she stands, " ulterioris ripce amove," as we have it 
in the sixth book of the ^neid, and asks you to take her 
to your arms. 

Such are the arguments, such the grounds, and such 
the efforts. That it is not dead this day, you know from 
the testimony before you. A soberer project than this line, 



REBIINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 425 

the sobriety of Connecticiit herself need not and could not 
demand. Such is the judgment of all that it is practicable, 
expedient, and sure to bo built ; and I feel that I should 
be only sacrificing the interests of my clients to a weak re- 
gard to my own disposition not to be tedious to you, if I 
did not pause till the candles come, in order to read the 
precise details to prove that if you give Connecticut the 
lift of your finger, the kind gift of an independent breath, 
and above all, the priceless gift of the deep water at last, 
she Avill as surely give you a railroad to the West as the 
sun that has just gone down will rise to-morrow. I will 
wait a few moments for the lights. (Intermission.) 

To enforce the cause of my clients I have been some- 
what tediously illustrating this public sentiment in Con- 
necticut, because it will be likely to be permanent. I have 
said that it is sober and practical ; and such was the judg- 
ment of the best witnesses in that connection, independent 
of any thing going to the West. There can be no doubt, 
whatever may be said, of the Lackawanna and other 
Pennsylvania coal brought over that road — there can be no 
doubt, that she herself will have her coal brought over this 
road, certainly as far as Hartford. 

But to argue in detail, is only enfeebling the subject 
itself. Sir, for the very reason that where land and deep 
water meet, and a transit is thereby effected ; for the rea- 
son that such a place becomes a great City, the necessity of 
such connection is clearly proved. The closer the railroad 
terminus comes to the water, the better. Where have the 
great Cities of the world been built ? Always at some 
point where the labors and the travels of the land meet the 
labors and the travels of tlie sea. Wherever there is a spot 
at which the caravan, or the river, the steamboat, or the 



426 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 

baggage wagon, or the locomotive, can bring the produc- 
tions of the land and deliver them to the earner of the sea, 
or wherever the carrier of the sea can bring the productions 
of distant lands to the locomotive, or to the other means 
of inland communications, there ever is a great commercial 
city. New Orleans marks such a contact as this ; New 
York another. Others are exhibited in ancient Tyre, and 
Alexandria, and Carthage ; where the caravan came to the 
waters of their great inland sea. London and Venice, and 
Liverpool mark other instances of such a connection. The 
closer the contact of the land is to the earner of the sea, 
the better for them ; the less the cost of transportation, the 
less is spent in lading and unlading, the less damage is 
effected in carriages burthened by freiglit and burthened by 
delay, and the better for them all. I feel, sir, that I ought 
to apologize for pressing such a topic as this on the Com- 
mittee. But really, when I consider that I am doing what 
I can in advraicing the last great link with the West, I do 
not think I am doing too much. 

I have come now to one element of alleged evil, and 
only one, on which I think tliis Legislature should pause 
a moment. And I do not deny that we should all pause 
on that one element. And let it be examined carefully. 
I refer to the alleged damage done to the harbor of Boston. 
This is a topic of vast imj)ortance and demanding your best 
thoughts. Tried by that light, and in that way, I submit 
that it does not present the slightest possible objection in 
the way of our undertaking. Now, sir, on the general sub- 
ject of the importance of our harbor, it is not necessary for 
me to say a word. This topic is elementary, and we are 
all of one mind. But when, on the other hand, when start- 
ing with the imiversal concession of the importance of pre- 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE, 427 

serving the harbor, they come to argue that not the slightest 
disphicement of the water is to be made for any cause, then 
I submit that it becomes simply absurd and extravagant ; 
and conducts, like all generalities, to no conclusion at all. 
To all such conclusions, I submit that the best answer is 
the past policy of the State. AVhat are harbors ever so 
spacious without an interior country, whose treasures may 
come to mingle with the treasiu'es of the seas ? What 
were Alexandria or Tyre without their commerce ? The 
true interests of commerce prescribe that a natural or an 
artificial river should pour its treasures into her lap. It 
may be necessary to exchange so much of the space oc- 
cupied by the spiles in the river, for the tonnage which that 
railroad may contribute to the business of the harbor. 

The truth is, and I hasten on, obvio^^sly, that instead 
of indulging in any general declamation on the subject of 
the harbor, — and I do not mean to say that general declama- 
tion has been uttered here, — instead of indulging in any vain 
rhetoric, we are to deal with cases as they come along (that 
has been the past policy of the State), to see what the pro- 
posed work will do to check currents, to shoal water, to 
abridge the area ; and then say, on the other hand, Avhat it 
may do to compensate by the blessings Avhich it brings and 
by the burthens which it removes. We have been in the 
habit of trying every case as it comes along. And how 
fortunate that policy has been, the past and the present of 
our Boston sufficiently exhibits. 

In one of the reports of the Commissioners, they advert 
to the depth of water at certain points in our harbor in the 
year 1761, and go to compare it with the present depth of 
water. Now that retrospect is not important. Sir, there 
is not a single scrap of proof, nor the least reason to sup- 
pose tliat the whole body of railroad displacement has i)ro- 



428 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

duced one single particle of this general alleged diminished 
depth of water. In the second place, if they had contrib- 
uted in some slight degree, it don't follow that our 2X)licy 
has not been one of fortunate wisdom in its general details. 
Sir, what was the harbor of Boston of 1761 to that of to- 
day ? That was the year that James Otis made his great 
speech. What were the navigation and commerce of that 
Boston to the Boston of 1850 ? If it be true that the 
railroads have contributed to shoal the water and abridge 
the area, yet if they have contributed to swell the popula- 
tion from 16,000 to more than 100,000, its area from 1,000 
to 10,000 acres, and the tonnage of the vessels from I know 
not what minimum to I know not what maximum ; if the 
citizens have found it of bricks, as the Komans did an an- 
cient city, and left it of marble, — of what conseq[uence is it ? 
Though the water be a little shoaler, yet the trade is ten 
thousand to one. Instead of a little African trade {and I 
wish the luhole continent ivas sunk in the sea hcforc ive 
had ever dipped ou7- ha7ids in that trade), we have, at the 
present time, a commerce extending throughout two hemi- 
spheres. 

After having conducted the policy of improvements in 
the harbor on so large a scale and with such happy results, 
that the State all at once should commence a refusal of this 
road, attended as it is with the promise of so much good, 
brings to our minds the old nursery story of the giant that 
swallowed half a dozen windmills, and then was choked to 
death with a pound of butter. 

But, Gentlemen, I hasten to take leave of you. You have 
heard us most patiently, and I trust you will decide wisely. 
It is somewhat more than four and twenty years since I last 
sat in one of the seats you now occupy, performing, accord- 



REMINISCENCES OF HUE US CHOATE. 429 

ing to my mediocrity, my sliarc also of the service of the 
State in this department. Since that, occupations and Iho 
flight of time have imjjaired whatever little ability I once 
had, as well as diminished the taste I once felt for this spe- 
cies of public exertion, and have removed any inclination 
to return to it to-day. Yet I can scarcely contemj)late, 
without something like envy, without at least a conscious 
wish that I could share in it, the opportunity you have to 
connect your names here and thus with such a service to 
the State as this. All our other great works of this kind 
are done. The East is ours by a double line of connection. 
All that was to be accomplished towards attracting to our- 
selves the Canadas and the north of New England, has 
been accomplished. 

One splendid effort has been made to lay hold of the 
West and North-west. One more may be undertaken, 
and there is no more afterwards to be made. Sir, if the 
East, if Maine, if that large but desert territory away up 
under the North Star, her coast iron bound, her soil sterile, 
her winters cold — if Maine needs two ocean communications, 
do you thiidv that the Great West will not pay for two only ? 
Yet two are all that can be considered practicable. And 
the last of these two is to be accomplished by yon or not 
at all. These are the opportunities that make me regret 
my want of participation in public life. 

'■'■Non equidem invideo, miror magisy 

You remember that passage in which a great English 
Statesman, on the verge of the grave, so pertinently ex- 
pressed himself, that he " would not give a peck of refuse 
wheat for all that there is of fame or honor in this world." 
That sentiment may be a true one. But to connect our- 
selves with an act of public utility, to do an act that shall 



430 REMINISCENCES OF HUFUS CIIOATE. 

stand out clear and distinct among all the aggregate of acts 
that have made Massachusetts what she has become, to rivet 
one more chain that shall bind the East to the free North- 
west for ever, to contribute to a policy that shall make it 
quite certain that if the great Central Constellation is to 
be placed over the sky, Kew England shall claim its share 
in the brightness — this is worth far more than all for which 
ambition has ever sighed ; and this, Mr. Chairman and 
Gentlemen, is permitted to-day to you. 

THE GILLESPIE CASE. 
The Commonwealtli vs. Eev. John B. Gillespie. 

This was an indictment for an assault of an aggravated 
character. The defendant being a Roman Catholic priest, 
and tried by a Protestant juvj, the difficulties of the de- 
fense were very great ; especially as the jury was composed 
of men by no means above prejudices. It was most stren- 
uously contested, and resulted in a sort of drawn game. 

I took down much of Mr. Choate's argument for the 
defendant ; and from my own manuscript and the report 
which appeared in the newspapers, the following extracts 
are collated. 

I know that Mr. Choate felt that for a Eoman Catholic 
priest very little justice was to be expected then and there. 
But he was never more eloquent, persuasive, and pathetic 
than I then saw him in this — as one of the newspapers 
called it — great Appeal. Mr. Choate rose and addressed 
the jury as follows : 

May it please your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury — 
Whatever we may severally think upon other parts of this 
case, we shall undoubtedly agree to the entire truth of this 
observation, at least : that for the reverend defendant this 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 431 

is a case in tlie highest degree important in every view 
which can be taken of it. He is a clergyman, not of your 
church, nor of mine, but he is in orders. He belongs to a 
denomination of Christians who, we all gratefully and cor- 
dially admit, have long lived among us, demeaning them- 
selves peaceably under the law. It is his duty to be a 
teacher of purity, benevolence, and peace, to be a light 
and guide to those around him, and to see that his life shall 
be a daily and beautiful example to all within the reach of 
his influence. On the night in question, he had just left a 
circle of clergymen, quite at the head of his own denomi- 
nation in its literary, theological, and parochial institu- 
tions ; and was on his way at that hour to administer the 
last rites of Christianity at the bed side of the dangerously 
sick. If in such circumstances, and under such influences, 
clad in sacred vestments, bound by every obligation that 
could press on a man's sense of duty, or awaken him to his 
larger interests, and almost in the very act of performing 
what he would necessarily deem a most sacred and re- 
sponsible service ; if he then, possessed at the instant by 
some demon of lust and wrath, without the temptation, — ^if 
a temptation can be imagined, — of the thousandth part of 
a second, perpetrated such a scandalous, incomprehensible, 
incredible and ridiculous assault and insult upon a woman 
in the very arms, if not of her husband, certainly of an 
affectionate protector, as it is not necessary for me further 
to describe — if he followed this up by a series of acts of 
brutality, first attacking the husband and next the guard- 
ians of the public peace, then he is, and of right ought to 
be, ruined, and that for ever — be summarily unfrocked and 
unmasked. This community will no longer bear his 
presence as a teacher among them, and the church to 
which he belongs, as prudent as she is devout, will in- 



432 EEMIXISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

stantaneoiisly cast liim in disgrace from out her limits. 
How much do you hokl in your charge ? Not his hfe, 
but every thing that makes the value of his life. You are 
called upon to judge him soberly, fairly, candidly, justly 
and according to law. 

If he is innocent — if the presumptiou of the law that 
he is so — and which, till he shall be proved otherwise, 
should be as irresistible as the heavens — if that be true in 
this case, then I have seen no client and no man in my 
whole professional life — now not short — so truly deserving 
of the deepest sympathy and the most heartfelt compassion 
of a jury. If that be so, then he has been the greatest suf- 
ferer — sparing his life — I have yet seen. If the story which 
he tells now, and has always told from the beginning, be 
true ; if coming from the agreeable and improving society 
of brothers and fathers who loved him and who love him 
still, going to make a sick call on one dangerously ill ; if 
perhaps already marked as the victim of that terrible com- 
plaint of the lungs, and being carefully muffled, he is seek- 
ing to improve his spirits and his health by the enjoyment 
of that blessed and refining autumnal evening, yet knowing 
he shall be in season for the performance of his duty, walk- 
ing rapidly, his mind abstracted and engaged in such con- 
templations as would be expected of such a man as you 
are told he is, under such circmiistances ; his cap drawn 
down over his eyes, so that Mrs. Towle could not see his 
face as she tells you, walking on a narrow sidewalk, at that 
spot three and a half feet wide, making a deflection to 
avoid those steps which his eye caught as he reached them ; 
if he then accidentally came in contact with the wife of 
Mr. Towle ; if the accident was misunderstood ; the wife 
misconstrued it ; tlie husband did not see it ; if the bus- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFIIS CHOATE. 433 

band, adopting his wife's impressions, reproached and 
abused him, as I do not blame Towle if he did, upon this 
misconstruction ; if he promptly denied any insult, and 
assured them it was all an utter mistake ; if Towle then 
rudely jiressed upon him and refused to receive his expla- 
nation ; if he then contracted a suspicion, judging from the 
Avay they were walking, and from the style in which he, 
innocent as he knew himself, was addressed, that they were 
no better than they should be ; if he then said she was no 
lady, or no wife ; thus stung by abuse, and off his guard at 
the moment of so unexpected a charge, if he then said 
that only word which I regret in the case ; if a violent 
blow immediately followed it, and jJerhaps another at the 
same instant ; lie fell from the sidewalk, or was hurled 
across the street ; if Towle called out " stop the rascal, he 
has insulted my wife," and he, as he was reaching the op- 
posite sidewalk, was met by those three young men, with 
feet like those of elephants, and fists like the paws of lions, 
knocked back again into the street, prostrate, and was then 
assailed by those unmanly kicks, such kicks and blows with 
fists or feet as you, Mr. Foreman, or any of you Grentlemen, 
would not undergo, nor have any friend you love undergo 
for moneys numbered ; if escaped from this ordeal, and 
running for his life almost, bathed in his own blood, con- 
fused and excited, he is collared by the watchman, carried 
to the watch-house and the jail, and left to pass the night 
there without the refreshment of the cup of water never 
denied to the condemned criminal ; he is carried the next 
day to the Police Court, and there the ten thousand arrows 
of ten thousand libels are instantly launched at him ; libels 
agonizing enough to any man, a thousand times more so to 
a clergyman, and he comparatively a stranger ; if with all 

19 



434 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

this he is innocent, I have known no case demanding 
warmer or sadder sympathies than this. 

One fault he may have committed, as I judge the evi- 
dence — not from himself — one imprudence, not affecting 
his character for modesty certainly, and that was, that 
when stung by the harsh treatment lie had received, all 
undeservedly, as he at least knew well, and judging by 
what he then saw of the parties that they were no better 
than they were bound to be, he may have expressed a 
doubt whether Mrs. Towle was a lady or a wife ; that is 
the only thing for which he, at the close of this trial, as a 
Christian and a teacher of Christian love, will have to take 
Mr. Towle by the hand and ask his forgiveness. If this be 
so, if this doubt was expressed, how ample the expiation ! 

You are to try Mr. Gillespie like Christian men, — and 
the first principle to which I nmst call your attention is 
one which you have often heard much better stated and 
more ably enforced than I can state or enforce it — that the 
law presumes every man to be innocent of every charge like 
this till the contrary is clearly and beyond a reasonable un- 
certainty proved. 

It was never more important than here that that prin- 
ciple should be borne in mind, first, and middle, and last. 
The law i)rcsumes this man to be perfectly innocent — it 
presumes that on that eventful night, to him, his head 
was clear of every drop of intoxicating drink, that good 
emotions — emotions of purity and benevolence, and not of 
violence and lust, were in his heart — and so far as it rea- 
sonably can do so, that the witnesses against him were 
mistaken. 

And permit me to say this presumption of the law is 
not a mere phrase without meaning. It is in the nature 
of evidence for the defendant, and therefore the government 



TvEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 435 

are bound to make out a perfectly clear and undoubted 
case of guilt. And unless the government have done some- 
thing more than to bring witnesses who contradict them- 
selves and each other, you are not at liberty, if you could, 
to tind my client guilty of this senseless, nonsensical, mo- 
tiveless, and most incomprehensible folly and wickedness. 

I do not fear that the manliness of this jury will think 
that I am afraid of the effect of the testimony, because I 
insist upon this principle, wdiich may yet be the only se- 
curity of your lives, gentlemen, or of mine. 

AVe call the highest ornaments of the Catholic church 
in this vicinity — some Protestants of excellent standing, — 
some of his fellow collegians — tliose who know him the 
most intimately — physicians who have attended with him, 
for a considerable period, the bed sides of the sick and the 
dying. If you are to try the case by proof, we give you, 
as to the point of character, as much evidence and as re- 
liable as could be produced by the beloved and revered 
pastor on whose ministrations any of you attend — if we 
are not the victims of a degree of perjury of which I have 
no conception. The defendant here is a man of collegiate 
education, refined in sentiment, peaceable, deferential, and 
reserved in the society. of females, and in all respects the 
very opposite of the licentious, coarse, and roivdyisli loafer 
who could have committed this act. I need not tell you, 
that in a case of this kind, the character of the accused is 
entitled to very great consideration. 

This man, thus pure and peaceable, was on his way to 
perform one of the most sacred, one of the most refining 
and improving offices of his religion. He was going to 
make a sick call. The physician has told you that the 
patient had a very formidable haemorrhage, was very weak, 
not in a condition immediately dangerous, but still it was 



436 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

not clear that before morning she would not first have re- 
quired and then have passed beyond the last services of her 
church. Mrs. Reed called him ; in a conoTe^ation of five 
or six thousand persons, his duties would be of course very- 
numerous ; he was told how the patient was ; he received 
it as a call to be made during the night, but considered it 
not imjjroper that before making it he should take that 
walk to Charlestown with Dr. Early, because, as he said, 
he thought his health required it, nor that, with the same 
object, he should extend his walk out of the immediate 
direction towards the home of the patient. Then it ap- 
pears by the testimony of three witnesses, Mr. Caverny, 
Mr. Linden, and Dr. Early, he arose rather hurriedly, put 
on his muffler, turned up the collar of his coat, and set 
out, to attend, as he said, that sick bed. If we are not 
going to believe his conduct absurd, that was his object. 
The learned counsel says he was out of his course. He can 
not speak for himself. The law speaks for him, and says 
his being out of his course is consistent with innocence. 
We have strengthened that presumption a little. 

Perha2)s I may have overstated this consideration. But 
I have been sick, and have seen those sick whom I loved, 
and it seems to me that a clergyman on an errand of mercy 
and charity to the sick, is privileged above the common 
walk ; that he is quite in the gates of heaven. They may 
become callous ; I do not believe it. I think rather that 
what in us is merely instinctive susceptibility in individual 
cases, becomes with them a good habit. 

I shall not believe that a man on such an errand, pure 
and modest from his mother's arms, and who has never 
been heard by men who have walked the streets with him, 
in friendly intimacy, by day and by night, to breathe an 
impure word, or an indelicate allusion even, can have 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 437 

lapsed into such beastliness all at once. I liave heard my 
share of stories about clergymen of all denominations. 
Take this huuuin creature — proved, as far as such a thing 
can be proved, to be of pure and blameless life — and what 
does he do .? My brother talks of temptation. What 
temptation 'i I can understand the influence of a long- 
continued course of severe temptation. The brightest and 
the fairest of mortals have fallen under that. I can under- 
stand, too, that a soldier at the storming of a city — a sailor 
fresh from a long voyage, fiery from enforced temperance, 
and half drunk, may be suddenly tempted to commit seduc- 
.tion or a rape. But in the name of decorum and propriety, 
what is charged here ! Was any thing more incompre- 
hensible ever imputed to man .^ What temptation could 
beset my client in these circumstances ? What part of his 
nature could here meet its accustomed food ? Is he a raw 
boy, making his first essay in rowdyism, anxious to show 
the Avorld that he does not care whether his mother knows 
he is out or not, and ready to commit any absurdity for 
the sake of what he terms fun ? He is a clergyman in the 
middle age of life. What can he gain by such a foolish- 
ness .^ Was not a fight inevitable ? Was he not peace- 
ably inclined ? Has any man a mark of a thousandth part 
the size of a pin's head to show from the eftects of his vio- 
lence ? And would this be so, if a man armed with sucli 
a cane had been then and there in a fighting frame of 
mind.? Was not the street broad and light with the 
brightness of a clear, full moon ? That such a man should 
commit such an hulecency, under such circumstances, is 
without precedent — is not to be believed upon any evidence. 
Mr. Choate then entered into a very critical discussion 
of all the details of the evidence, showing the contradic- 
tions of the witnesses, etc. 



438 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Speaking of two of the witnesses, he said : — 

But these witnesses appear upon the stand. It is the 
privilege of the accused to see the witnesses, and I submit 
that they do not hear that peculiar, indescribahle, but 
always obvious and plain appearance of respectability 
which we claim. 

From their own evidence, one was excited. I hope 
it's the first glass of whisky punch she ever took. If so, 
it would have excited her the more. If not so, it is a 
liahit with her. Either way, she was not in a state to see 
clearly or report clearly. 

And they have contradicted themselves four times — 
not willfully, I hope. 

So much for the Government's burthen and the way 
they sustain it. 

Now we have positive testimony inconsistent with this 
indecency. 

By God's Providence we produce three witnesses 
(naming them) who saw the whole — whose attention was 
fixed, and whose power of observation and opportunity 
were perfect. 

It was in this case, that seeing a juror look stubbornly 
hostile, Mr. Choate marched up to him, and doubling his 
fist, thundered out, " I have the utmost confidence that I 
can satisfy you on this, as well as on every other point of 
the case ; lend me your ear !" 

Si)eaking of the beginning of the alleged assault, he 
said : — " It was a mere accidental push ; such a mere jos- 
tle, Mr. Foreman, as you might give another, in coming 
out of a Union Meeting at Fanueil Hall" (he knew the 
Foreman was a Webster Whig) ; "or a Friday evening 



RE3IINISCENGES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 431) 

Prayer meeting" (looking at another and very religious 
juror) ; "or a Jenny Lincl Concert;" (looking now at still 
another juror, who was a musical man.) 

Speaking of the watchman's testimony, he said : — I 
always fear and shudder when I see a watchman swearing 
to a conversation. A conversation is so almost incapable 
of being reported accurately. The change of an emphasis, 
a word, or even a letter, may so mutilate the whole intent. 
But a watchman's business brings him only in contact with 
the harsher side of life, and his judgment must be severe. 

He concluded his argument thus : — 

If tlie evidence appears to you unmanageal)ly contra- 
dictory, it is your duty to lay the contradictory evidence 
entirely out of view, and to form your judgment upon the 
grand probabilities afforded by the nature of man, the pre- 
vious good reputation of the defendant, the utter absence 
of any conceivable motive to the commission of the acts 
alleged, and the presence of tlie most controlling induce- 
ments to a contrary course. I ask you thus to desert what 
is not evidence because it is not certain, and turn your 
attention to that which is certain — the known nature of 
man. 

Gentlemen, the defendant worships God as from his 
infancy he has been taught to do, according to the dictates 
of his own conscience, and not to those of yours or mine. 
I have not adverted to this subject, because it would have 
been entirely out of place for me to do so. This is a court 
of law. You are here to judge your fellow-creature, — not 
of meats and drinks, of ordinances, of new moons and Sab- 
baths, — you are to judge whether he has violated the law. 
The Constitution says, in the Bill of Rights, that " all 
religious sects and denominations, demeaning themselves 
peaceably and as good citizens of the Commonwealth, shall 



440 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

be equally under the protection of law." Gentlemen, 
before you can find a verdict for tlie government, you 
must be sure that this defendant, moved by some inscruta- 
ble and incredible influence, like a demoniac possession, 
has committed this infamy. I do not appeal to your prej- 
udices, for you have none, — sitting where you sit, you are 
bound to have none ; nor to your sympathies, for this is 
no place for them, — ^but I appeal to your reason and your 
oaths. 

WOODBURY vs. ALLEN. 

This was a Patent case, in which Choate was for plain- 
tiff patentee. 

I made, as follows, notes upon it, as I heard the argu- 
ment : He oj3ened by the remark : 

Gentlemen of the jury, never in the whole course 
of my life have I risen under such disadvantage : a long, 
able argument preceding, a subject originally dry, now 
threadbare ; and I must pursue the old treadmill round 
with you once more. 

As the opposite counsel, Mr. Whiting, had cautioned 
the jury against the oration which he predicted Mr. Choate 
would make, he disclaimed it altogether ; but in the very 
disclaimer burst out into a climax upon the obhgation and 
dependence upon inventors, of the gigantic resources of 
America. 

Subsequently he appealed to the enthusiasm of the 
jurymen (having shown his client to be the only recog- 
nized patentee under the broad seal of the United States), 
by describing Whitney — the man who gave cotton to the 
South, who qualified her whole history, etc. — yet dying 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 441 

brokea-liearted ! and Fulton, who gave her great lakes to 
America, living in distress I 

He said of a witness, whom everybody saw to be weak, 
and whom he was expected to attack, " Well, I'll let him 
pass, he is not necessary to be demolished for our case ;" and 
then talked for fifteen minutes about it, and contrived, be- 
fore he dropped him, to slide in every thing v.diich could be 
said against him — riddlinc^ him fore and aft. 

I was struck, in this argument, bv noticinsi: how con- 
tinually Mr. Choate applied the maxim of Demosthenes — 
to interrupt his regular and prepared flow, by exclamations, 
interrogations, sneers, etc. 

He constantly, absolutely solicits the attention and in- 
dulgence of the jury : "As you have permitted me to read 
the introduction, suffer me to analyze the close of this 
patent, given by the Government, and stamped by its 
broad seal." 

All local prejudices, and sectionalisms, and peculiari- 
ties, and traits, he catches at. He paid, in his argument 
on the cotton gin, a beautiful tribute to AVhituey : 

The man who for a Ions; time was hooted round the 
courts of his country ; who deserved statues, and wdiose 
name now is a spell in the patent world, startling like tlie 
title of the Constitution! And I see on this Patent, 
taking up the ample parchment in his hand, the name 
and style of John C. Calhoun, whose name calls up all 
that is strong and sectional in the spirit of the South. 

Again he said : He is a Yankee boy, with the blood 
of Carver coursing in his veins. 

In this argument he ventured a singular gesture — 
doubling his fist, and shaking his arm perpendicularly 
above and around his head in the frenzy of his passion, ho 



19 



# 



442 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

said, " this other patent here is of no more value than 
the red ribbons that bind its parchment." 

The oppsite counsel earnestly objected to his reading 
from a law book. Well, said he, I aint reading it yet. 
(Laugh.) I might read it — I wont read it. My brother 
objects to law — he don't want law. (Laugh.) Improper 
to read it ! Nonsense ; done every day. However, I wont 
read it, but I'll state the whole of it as a ^jart of my ar- 
gument. (Great laughter.) 

" They come here to show their inventions, with no more 
inventive brains, as my Lord Coke says, than they have 
souls." (Gi-reat laugh, in which the judge heartily joins.) 

In an interlocutory discussion of the admission of a de- 
position, he said : — 

Better that the Court House be passed over by the 
plowshare than that law should be administered on such 
I^rinciples. 

Heaven and earth shall pass away before this grand 
rule of understanding man shall vibrate. 

Such are the canons of evidence ; that the party shall 
look upon the witness, to see his manner ; whether our 
law be administered by Priest or Chancellor, in a Court 
House or beneath an old English oak. 

Again, in the argument, he said : — 

Try this with fairness. Try it with the bandage over 
the eyes. Bury the hatchet ; honor bright ! 

His favorite device of conceding the point, and then in 
some other way, or subsequent connection, bringing it in 
again, was adroitly displayed in two things. The Court 
stopped him in presenting a specification of claun of the 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CIIOATE. 443 

Other party, as a confession. After a severe, but courteous 
argument with the Judge, he said, "Well, I wont press it, 
if your Honor don't approve ;" hut subsequently he con- 
trived to bring it all arguendo before the jury, without 
formally taking up the specification, in hand. 

Again— as Mr. AVhiting had in the outset cautioned the 
jury against an appeal for inventors, he disclaimed it al- 
together in the exordium ; but in the peroration it all ap- 
peared. 



SPEECH OF MR. CHOATE BEFORE LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE. 

[Petition to set off tbrco wards frotn the City of Roxbury, as a separate Agricultural 

Town.] 

I think, gentlemen, that it must be admitted by all of 
you, at least, by all the members of the Legislature, 
although my learned brother has been pleased to take 
a somewhat different view of the case, that the gen- 
eral character of the petition whicli is presented to you, 
the grounds on which it proceeds, the objects it aims 
at, and the source it comes from, are such as entitle it, at 
least, to the kindest and most parental consideration of the 
Legislature. 

The petitioners are here. Gentlemen, if you will give me 
leave to remind you, not seeking for railroad charters, or 
mutual insurance charters, or for the loan of money or of 
credit from the State ; but I hope I shall provoke no man's 
smile when I say, seeking fur a better liberty under the law. 
They are here with no revolutionary purpose, to throw off 
all social ties ; but asking only the inestimable privilege of 
being allowed to form with one another sweeter civil and 
social ties, to the end that they may the better perform all 



444 REMINiaCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE, 

social and all civil duties. They are not here seeking the 
lion's share, or any share of the pauper tax, or of any of 
the cemeteries to disturb the repose of the dead ; but are 
seeking only a better and a completer government of them- 
selves. 

They are here, not from any fear of any future tax 
from any foreign or a native pauper population, not from 
any fear of any thing ; but they are here under a present 
and practical feeling, gentlemen, that a community in 
lower Roxbury, of native citizens, undoubtedly respecta- 
ble in its general constitution, of very great worth in its 
general character, but a community distinct from them- 
selves, distinct by local position, distinct by industrial 
pursuits, distinct by modes of municipal life, distinct some- 
what by sympathies alienated, I will not say soured — a 
strong feeling that such a community should have a dis- 
tinct government from their own. I say that this com- 
munity is this day their master. Good government, or 
bad government, as my learned brother chooses to repre- 
sent it, it is the government of another ; and my clients 
seek to escape from it, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, not 
by rushing into any revolutionary form of policy, but by 
setting up that old and endeared form which, beginning at 
the Rock, beginning on the Cape, transplanted from the 
cabin of the Mayflower, a New England man takes with 
him as he takes his Bible or his Constitution, whether he 
ascends the waters of the Mississippi or of the Columbia — ■ 
that ancient form beneath which alone the agricultural 
mind breathes freely and trains itself perfectly to the 
duties of citizenship ; I mean the old-fashioned form of 
town government in town meeting. These are the general 
features of the causes which bring the town of Roxbury 
here to-day. I am quite sure, in advance, that such a case 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 445 

from such a source, proceeding on such grounds, and reach- 
ing to such results, will be treated as all are treated who 
come to you, parentall}^, considerately and kindly. 

It has seemed to me, give me leave to say, and I have 
felt it with great force during my learned brother's afgu- 
ment, that it is all but indispensable, before we take one 
single step towards an attempt to determine this case, that 
we should begin, if we can, by doing what my learned 
friends on the other side have not lifted a finger to try to 
do ; and that is, if possible, to settle some standard, some 
rule, some formula, some criterion, if language is equal to 
it, to determine whether a petitioning population, seeking 
to be a town by themselves, have made out a right to be a 
town. What shall be the standard of determination, Mr. 
Chairman ? I submit to you and to your associates that 
your minds struggle for a rule. What shall it be ? 

Now, it is very easy indeed — examples enough have 
been given this afternoon — for us to fill our mouths with 
phrases which seem to mean something, and which do mean 
something, but which do not throw a ray of light upon 
this question which is so important. 

I have the honor, with a good deal of diffidence, but 
after a good deal of reflection, and at last with a good deal 
of reasonable reliance that it will not be unsatisfactory in 
the judgment of the Committee, to state that the formula 
for such a standard, or the criterion under the policy of 
Massachusetts, is substantially this : When the area and 
its inhabitants seeking separation from another town or 
city, and an incorporation as a new one, are sufficiently 
large and numerous to constitute of themselves a new toAvn 
of resj)ectable dimensions, and jjopulation and ability, 
above the average of the towns of the commonwealth — 



446 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C 11 GATE. 

above the class of what would he called inconsiderahle and 
unimportant, or small towns, and yet leave the parent town 
not absorbed by annexation, with which these petitioners 
have nothing to do, but will leave it in a municipal life of 
avehige dimensions, populousness and ability ; then if the 
public policy shall in this behalf be satisfactory, I mean to 
say, not the making of two inconsiderable towns, but of 
two large ones, which shall be above the average ; then, 
sir, if the welfare of petitioners who apply for the incorpo- 
ration will be promoted in a considerable and apprecia- 
ble degree by a separation — so much promoted that this 
will exceed the inconvenience and evil, if any, occasioned 
to the residue, so that upon the whole there will be an in- 
crease of the accommodations and convenience and proba- 
ble prosperity of the original whole as a mass, the separa- 
tion is proper to be made. I pray you to allow me by this 
fading twilight to pause for a moment upon this criterion. 

My learned brother having discussed no standard of his 
own, I can of course have no rei3ly to it. Some allusion 
was made — not very satisfactory — to the report of the city 
of Eoxbury. But as far as I understand it, it may be con- 
sidered as substantially conforming to my own view, and 
with an earnest petition to be forgiven for repeating the 
criterion, I shall have argued this case when I submit to 
you that we bring it up to every element which enters into 
that criterion. 

To say that we cleave down an ancient and a noble 
whole into insignificance, is to say what is not true. To 
say that we unnecessarily multiply corporations, is to say 
what is not true. A town is presented with a corporate 
existence ; two blades of grass grow where one grew be- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUB CHOATE. 447 

fore ; and I call that pretty good farming, gentlemen, mor- 
ally, politically, rurally. I trust that the political condi- 
tions of my standard are entirely satisfied. 

I now have the honor to submit that we brino; ourselves 
altogether within the other branch of my conditions, hav- 
ing satisfied you that we do not destroy a great corpora- 
tion to make two insignificant corporations. I now am ready 
to advance to the question of the convenience and incon- 
venience — the good and the evil of the change itself, to the 
mass now of Roxbury. There is no public policy against 
us. If I can show you, looking now on this picture and 
then on that, that this proposed change is beneficial, you 
will commend yourselves by giving us a favorable Report. 
I do not say to our hearts or to our gi-atitude, or that we 
shall reward you with our votes, (for, alas, we are no con- 
stituents of yours, save in that enlarged sense in which we 
are constituents of all the representatives of Massachu- 
setts,) but to your own sense of justice, for conferring a 
lasting public benefit upon the community. Passing from 
strong feeling, strong desire, cherished expectation, and 
fixed purpose, to the field of calm reason, we shall endeavor 
to satisfy you that good can be done. If I can not show 
you, not that some evil will not be done, but that the good 
will outweigh, appreciably and certainly, all the evil that 
there is or can be, then dismiss us from your presence. 
But if I shall show you a reasonable case, remember that 
you do not hold us to a mathematical demonstration, and 
that you will not turn away from us because we can not 
offer you certainty ; but if we show you that a great op- 
portunity is afforded, according to a moral probability, to 
do a real good, if you do it I apprehend you do your duty. 

But, sir, they say Old Roxbury opposes us, and objects 
to our setting up for ourselves. She loves us so tenderly 



448 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CIIOATE. 

and so dearly that she wishes still to embrace iis in her 
arms. Some of her citizens love us for the honors we aid 
in bestowing upon them and some of her officials for the 
contributions we make to her public treasury. 

Gentlemen, I might turn to the witnesses who have 
testified, and to their salaries ; while running them over it 
would be easy to make a merriment of what is, in reality, 
a grave matter. It would seem, to be sure, as if they had 
testified " all for love, and a very little for the bottle." 
Methinks. I hear the shout, " Great is Diana of the Ephe- 
sians ;" and then, in an undertone, "for by this craft ive 
live." 

Mr. Dudley loves us at the rate of eleven hundred a 
year, and Mr. Howe a hundred and seventy-five. [Immense 
sensation.] Such love as this, Mr. Chairman, will never 
grow cold. 

I submit to you that, upon the question of the annexa- 
tion of Canada to the United States, it w^ould be just as 
proper to call the Governor General of that Province, as 
he leaves the Queen, with his salary of £10,000 sterling 
annually, to give testimony upon the sentiments of the in- 
habitants, concerning the project, as it is to call these sal- 
aried gentlemen here to testify concerning the sentiments of 
the people of Eoxbury on this question. No ! There is 
no real feeling there against our petition, trust me upon it. 
There are individuals who feel strongly, there is an organ- 
ization which can create and diffuse a pretty powerful sen- 
timent within a limited circle. Yet there are, even with 
the aid of that influence, but 486 out of 2000 voters who 
can be galvanized into the slightest degree of activity 
against such an application as this. 

But let us go to the evils. I have found it infinitely 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 449 

difficult, and think that you have yourselves, to lay fingers, 
out of all the heads my learned brother has heen able to 
afford us, upon any thing like a clear and precise list of 
the evils which old Roxbury may suffer. Be they what 
they Avill, and come they in what shape they may — what 
are the evils which old Roxbury may receive ? One of 
them touches us in our most sacred sensibilities. Of tliat 
I will speak before I am done. But I am speaking now of 
corporate interests. Of what are they afraid ? There is 
an ajDprehension that the burden of lower Roxbury will be 
somewhat increased by the separation of the upj)er regions. 
That, I understand, is the general difficulty. It is put in 
various ways. They talk of the Irish population. But as 
I understand it, at last, there is some fear that the burdens 
of lower Roxbury will be enhanced by the separation. If 
they should be, I sliall have tlie honor, not to pile up, but 
to hold up the mountain preponderance of benefit, on the 
other side, to counterbalance it. 

But I intend to submit to you that it is mere cant and 
declamation, not in the hands of my learned brother, but 
in the hands of those whom he represents, and that there 
is not a particle of solid and intelligent reason to believe 
that the burdens of that Corporation will be enhanced, in 
proportion to their numbei's, one seven thousandth part of 
a farthing, by the separation we so much desire. 

But there is another class of burdens, and I meet them 
upon that class, for I saw that, by the way in which the 
subject was presented, they were making an unjust im- 
pression upon their hearers. I refer to the class from which 
the town derives no benefit, but which are only unmitigated 
burdens, and that is the foreign pauper population. They 
are afraid that they will have more Irish paupers to pay 
for if they are separated than if we remain together. 



450 REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

ISTow I say that there is no reasonable ground of belief 
that the burden will be increased on this part of Roxbury 
one particle more than it will on us. To say that, taking 
the entire mass which is now in both Eoxburys, the chances 
are that more will live to be paupers there than among us 
is to assert what can not be proved. Who knows any thing 
about it ? Who can say on the other hand that of that 
great tide of emigration with which the Old World is pour- 
ing itself upon us, that in the five and twenty years to 
come more of them will stop and remain in lower Koxbury 
than in upper ? W^ho does not say that the person who 
makes such a statement has deserted the halls of legislation, 
and turned into a fortune teller and a gambler ? He specu- 
lates on that of which all must be ignorant. Here is the 
honest Englishman, the pious Scotchman, the worthy Ger- 
man, the hardy Irishman, the gay Frenchman the happiest 
of them all, who are coming to this country by thousands ; 
and this Legislature is to refuse us a corporation upon the 
learned ground that my learned friends are all but certain, 
that is all who have salaries, and offices, and fees, that 
more will light in their city than in our town Their poor- 
house, they say, is better than ours ; as if the lightning of 
God might not destroy it, or the accident of fire might not 
burn it down ; as if ours might not be built better than 
theirs ; as if foreigners were coming to this country to 
enter a good poor-house. 

W^ho will tell me, when you look upon the two terri- 
tories, when you consider that our gardens are to be laid 
out and q>\\x houses to be constructed, when these beauties 
here are to be made to present themselves all marriageable 
to the sun, they will not attract and pay the foreigner a 
thousand to one, nay even over and above a thousand to 
one, more than any attractions this overgrown and noisome 



REMINISCENCES OF 11 U F U S C H O A T E . 451 

city of lower Eoxbury will present. I would not abuse 
my clients, as my friend has done liis, by implication. I 
intreat you to bear with me in considering whether or not 
it be a sheer conjecture, and whether there was any thing 
ever presented in the womb of the future to the mind of 
man, which is more of a fancy than that. There is not 
time and there is no need to break this butterfly upon a 
wheel. I find this business done very much to my hands 
in a very able document put forth by the city of Roxbury, 
before my friends had got excited in the progress of this 
very able investigation. 

I know no other evil. But one has been adverted to 
in such strong terms to me as to excite our own sympa- 
thies, and so strong that I can not doubt that in every 
thing he said my brother was sincere. But in taking my 
leave of them, permit me to submit that the whole of this 
objection is altogether unfounded, exaggerated, and over- 
strained in its application to this deliberation to-night. 
My learned brother alludes to the cemetery. His allusion 
to that shows that he either imperfectly comprehends or 
he unsatisfactorily and incompletely reciprocates what I 
thought was the admirable manner in which my learned 
friend discussed that part of the case. It is not a matter 
which we can discuss. It should be transferred to the re- 
gion of feeling. I would commit it to the matronage of 
Roxbury. I would commit it to the bereaved of lower 
Roxbury ; to the mourner, who is the only inhabitant of 
the cemetery at last. And I say that no affection of the 
heart, no prejudice, no feeling, nothing so holy as that 
cemetery, or the sentiments connected with it, shall be ne- 
o-lected in order to accomplish the object of our petition. 
This cemetery shall be yielded to them, if you will permit 



t-> 



452 EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

me to say so, free of burdens. We sliall only be too glad 
to keep the thronged passage ways to it accessible. That 
place of the dead, that resting place of quiet, shall be 
guarded for them. The bones of both the Eoxburys shall 
repose there till the sea gives up its dead. To whom of 
the dead or the living does it signify within what line of 
corporate territory it remains ? The name shall be of Rox- 
bury ; the jurisdiction shall be in Roxbury ; the property 
shall be in Roxbur}^ ; the grounds shall be hallowed and 
appropriated to Roxbury, if they please to have it so, alone. 
And to the mourner how little it imports, since he can not 
hold the dear departed object any longer in his arms, or 
bury him in his church, or in his garden, but must send 
him to that old home — how little he regards the corporate 
name. Consecration, and purity, and peace, he desires ; 
and he shall have them, in the bosom of a kindred, a Chris- 
tian and a civilized community. If there were not senti- 
ments in my own bosom which made me feel that my 
brother could not have said any thing on this subject without 
feeling, I should have believed that he could not consider that 
any objection to the grant of our petition. Do not let any 
thing connected with this sacred subject interrupt our pro- 
ceedings. We do Roxbury, therefore, no harm in her pulse 
or in her heart. No harm ! On the contrary, as I am 
about to take my leave of that subject, I will submit to 
you that, unless exj)erience is a liar, separate us, and she 
shall grow by our growth, and strengthen with our strength. 
In this great growth both parties shall gain by the separa- 
tion. 

Will my brother allow me to remind you that if the 
prayer of this petition should be granted, and that if we 
enter into any thing like a ten thousand tli part of her pros- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 453 

perity tliat we hope for, that if we shall behold on this or 
that beautiful spot a house or a cluster of houses, does not 
lower Koxbury know that every cask of lime and every foot 
of timber comes to hei- wharves, and we take it from her 
hands ? I present it to you, that the benefit is as obviously 
hers, in tlie emi)loyment of her own wharves to bring the 
necessary articles for the improvement of our land, as it was 
for England a benefit if she had originally known that it 
was her true policy to give the colonies their freedom, and 
make tliem a market. 

I iiave done with the evils, and I say that I find no evil. 
Public policy we satisfy, because we simply give to the 
State two daughters f)r one, and "each fairer than tlie 
other ;" the daughter fairer than the fair mother herself— 
two for one : 

''Maire pulchra, filia pulckrior." 

Not either unable to go along, but each of them up to the 
standard, ami beyond the average standard, of municipal 
respectability and municipal duty. Then we do no evil. 

I am sure you will hardly suspect me at this time of 
nigiit of a desire to declaim ; but it is hardly extravagant 
to say that this l)ill which you are asked to pass will be 
received like another Declaration of Independence. The 
ringing of bells and the firing of bonfires will exhibit the 
feeling that exists. This strength and unanimity of feeling 
I regard as very high evidence that the interests of these 
persons will be promoted by this act ; it is evidence that 
there are evils which they feel, and that the separation will 
be the remedy. 

Boston is connected by ties to all parts of the State ; 
but would you allow Boston to govern Norfolk, or Salem 



454 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

to govern Essex, or New Bedford to govern Bristol ? Cer- 
tainly not ! So here exactly is an illustration of what ex- 
ists between us and our very good friends. This, gentlemen, 
is an agricultural district. It has agriculture for its general 
employment. Its market is Boston. Here and there is a 
beautiful clump of trees, as there will often be, and they 
grow a little on the side of that beautiful pond embosomed 
in Jamaica Plains. Here and there are the mechanic, the 
artisan, the blacksmith, the carpenter, just as there are in 
every farming town in Massachusetts. But its general 
character is agricultural, dotted here and there with a beau- 
tiful locality, standing out at last upon a plain farming 
land. This upper Koxbury, there it is ! And it is quite 
true that, in point of fact, the inhabitants of wards six, 
seven and eight are thrown together by a general influ- 
ence of locality, in addition to which some of them meet in 
the cars every day, going to and coming from Boston ; but 
they never meet a Roxbury man once in a twelvemonth. 

What is the character of the lower town .^ It is a trad- 
ino; and commercial town. There are the artificial side- 
walks, the gas-lighted stores, the artificial supply of water, 
the crowded and noisome population, the indestructible 
character of the town. And there it will be for ever. 

Strengthen the ties by which they may be bound to- 
gether, in a freer and easier manner. But I do submit, 
that to tell the Committee that these two are one, is to 
disturb the political and social relations of civil life. An 
old poet has said, " God made the country and man made 
the town." A still older poet has said, 

" God the first garden made, 

And the first city Cain." 

The city is, in the nature of things, very different from 



KEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 455 

the country. My brother may come with his honeyed words, 
and tell liow much he loves us. But I ask for this separa- 
tion on the ground of incompatibility of interest, and de- 
mand it, also, on the ground of incompatibility of temper. 
I remember to have passed a portion of my life in New 
Ipswich. There was Old Ipswich. There was the town 
and there the numbers. I will tell you an instance of their 
government of us. Among the objects of expenditure were 
fire engines, hose, hooks and ladders. I remember that the 
l^eople of Old Ipswich kept all the engines in Chebacco, 
which was the old Indian name of the town, and sent down 
very religiously the hooks to New Ipswich, in order to pull 
down the buildings, to prevent any further spread of fire, 
every one of the houses being at least half a mile from each 
other. (Laughter.) 

Not only do the petitioners seek a separation, but they 
seek a kind of government in which the whole people will 
have a freer action on the administration of affairs. They 
want a town government. 

To determine, in town meeting, wliat shall be done by 
the people is one of the most inestimable of privileges. I 
have not lived long enough in cities to believe that that 
privilege is not still held inestimable by the people. The 
towns are enabled to judge practically of the economical 
expenditure of their money. If they determme on an expen- 
diture, and determine it in advance, I think that the chances 
are ten thousand to one that their expenditures will be 
wiser made than if they entrusted the decision of them to 
boards sitting in the dark, or, at least, in the night-time. 
And when the objects of the expenditure are explained, I 
maintain that the power to judge in advance, to judge in 
the day-timo, is better than to act upon a rejjort without 



456 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

knowing any thing about the subject. It is all the differ- 
ence between possessing substantial intiuencc, and being 
mocked by the semblance of power without its reality. 

There are higher reasons, which I should present if I 
did not fear to trespass on your time, why I maintain that 
the mode of government by town meeting should be re- 
ligiously observed with every community in which it is prac- 
ticable. These town meetings are the free schools of free 
men ; they are the schools where the people learn to think 
upon public affairs ; where they learn the first lessons of 
self-government ; where they learn for the first time to ex- 
amine j)ublic subjects, to debate in the presence of one 
another, and to exchange opinions on j^ublic questions of 
importance. They carry, therefore, gentlemen, public life 
down to the minutest member of society ; and they connect 
the minutest inhabitant of the smallest and remotest town 
directly at last with the State. 

I regard the town governments as great educational 
agencies, therefore, for the present andfor the future ; I regard 
them as great agencies for the retaining of liberty alive, for 
teaching its spirit, and furnishing an ability to maintain it. 
I honor them for what they have done. I am reminded, in 
this connection — as one who has jireceded me was reminded 
of, and alluded to Mr. Jefferson — I am I'eminded of a man, 
one of ourselves, better than Jefferson. I refer to the sen- 
timents of John Adams. No one understood better than he 
the causes of the Kevolution, or the circumstances by which 
the American mind was influenced. I have been looking 
recently at a letter which he addressed, in 1782, to a cele- 
brated Frenchman, who was about doing so absurd a thing 
as to write a history of the American Revolution, and was 
asking Mr. Adams about the authorities necessary for that 
purpose. In his reply, written in English, but translated 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 457 

into French, and the original lost, Mr. Adams observes, 
that there are four gi-eat institutions in this country, to 
the workings of which he must pay particular attention. 
The first of these was the towns, in town meetino-s assem- 
bled, as among the great influences causing the American 
Revolution. He went on to describe the practice of these 
towns, and adds that the effect of that institution had been 
that all the inhabitants had acquired from their youth the 
habit of discussing, deliberating, and determining ujDon 
public affairs. It w^as among these little primitive and 
pure democracies that the sentiments of the community, 
from the commencement of the dispute with England to 
the surrender at Yorktown, were first formed, and their 
resolutions first adopted. Keep, then, these schools of 
thought and action open, as you keep the school-house of 
the child open, and for the same reason. I have often been 
struck that in the crowded population of cities, in the 
meetings of clubs and societies, men's minds become very 
expert, and men become prompt in action. The agricul- 
tural mind, on the contrary, is slower. The agricultural 
mind is differently trained. He who follows that profes- 
sion has different circumstances around him. The popula- 
tion is sparse. You hear already that there is a total loss 
of interest in West Roxbury in public affiiirs. 

I have not time to develope the idea, but I am sure you 
will regard with all solicitude every institution and every 
influence everywhere that shall educate the mature agri- 
cultural mind, and enable it to perform its just part and 
hold its just place in the deliberations of the Legislature 
and of the State. You keep open the free school of the 
child. For Grod's sake do not shut the free school of the 
man ! 

I put it, therefore, to you, Mr. Chairman, to my friend 



458 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

here, and I submit also to this Committee, while I recog- 
nize the necessity of a city, while on a certain area and 
under certain circumstances, the city government is indis- 
pensable, that, outside of that, " it is evil and only evil, 
and that continually." I do, therefore, submit to you, 
that it is one deserving, in this case, of the remedy pro- 
posed, 

I go for good government by itself; and I think a 
town iTOvernment is better for an agricultural district — 
better for the a2;riculturist as a man, and fits him better 
for all the ofhces in the Commonwealth. Make the change 
we ask for, and Eoxbury takes her place at once in the circle 
of prosperity that surrounds her. Cajiital and taste will 
add the beauties of art to the beauties of nature. Capital 
and taste will then come to beautify and adorn ; to blend 
the achievements of art with the matchless performances of 
nature. 

But my brother thinks we shall drive out the middling 
classes. I submit to you that over and above the million- 
aires, the humble settlers Avill be directed this way by the 
Branch Kailroad. These improvements, by which the 
wise policy of your predecessors has enabled this commu- 
nity to avail themselves of their opportunities for taste and 
enjoyment, will enable men who Avork all day in town to 
unite themselves to their families at night and treat them-' 
selves to the country air. AVhat that is worth I had oc- 
casion, before a former committee, to endeavor to explain. 
And I have been so much struck by the inadequacy of my 
brother's view that we come here only to invite the mil- 
lionaire among us, that I have to ask your attention to 
the fact, that one of the best uses of this town will be the 
moral influence which it will exert upon the no less useful, 



KEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 459 

but larger branch, of society, the middling class. I Lad oc- 
casion, in advocating the establishment of a Branch Kail- 
road, as I have occasion in arguing in favor of the establish- 
ment of this New Home, to deal with the moral uses of 
railways and of legislation. 

But in my judgment no use of railroads is more worthy 
to fix the attention of the Legislature, and attract its favor, 
than this of enabling the man of small means to spend a 
2)ortion of his time in the country, without j)rejudice to his 
means of livelihood. The evils of living wholly confined 
to town can hardly be appreciated by you, gentlemen, who 
have the advantage of residing elsewhere ; but you may 
have formed some idea of them from what you have seen 
in winter. This road will give the man of limited income, 
whose bread, and whose family living, depend upon his 
being in the crowded haunts of traffic during the greater 
part of the day, the chance of spending his evenings, and 
his Sabbaths, in the pure and sweet air of the country, in 
the midst of his household circle, on his own little spot of 
ground, and yet enable him to be the next morning at his 
desk in the counting house, or place in the workshop, with 
little or no increase of cost. And I shall provoke no wise 
man's sneer when I say, that the many clusters of quiet 
cottages and beautiful dwellings, which will spring up 
along tho line of our road, affording happy homes to the 
man of business, delightful retreats to the wearied citizen, 
are of themselves no small argument in favor of our 
petition. * "'•" * I put it, sir, as one great advantage, 
that Ave traverse this region of country to win it from the 
wild flower, the wild bird, the night breezes of the sea, and 
make it the pleasant abode of hundreds who would else sel- 
dom see any thing but dusty streets, and forests of masts 



4G0 EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

at the wharfs. And if health is better than sickness, a full 
cheek than a sunken one, a bright, clear eye, than one dim 
and clouded, a hajjpy and uncorrupt heart better than one 
tainted and debauched, and if our road shall be the means 
of bringing these advantages to the tired and driven mer- 
chant, book-keeper, or clerk, in Kilby or Washington 
street, whose wildest dreams have never yet indulged in 
the vision of a country seat of his own, the charter will 
not have been granted, nor the road built, in vain. 

Give us, gentlemen, the government we seek, and this 
town will do for Roxbury what, thus flxr, the matchless 
beauties of Roxbury herself have been unable to do for 
herself. Gentlemen, it will do more. It will allay excite- 
ment ; it will reopen fountains of feeling ; it will enable 
men to know who they are and what they are ; it will 
cover you with the gratitude of thousands unknown to 
you by sight or name, with no vote to honor or reward 
you, but who will yet thank you, and the government for 
whom you act, for the performance of a great beneficent 
deed, I think too long delayed. 

THE PINGREE CASE, JANUARY 24, 1851. 

This case grew out of the insolvency of David Pingree, 
a gentleman who had been considered very wealthy, and 
wliose failure astonished everybody. I heard Mr. Choate's 
argument against the assignees of Mr. Pingree and for the 
defendant corporation, and noted some of his points. 

Among other things, one of the witnesses let fall the 
remark that Mr. Pingi'ee had said, " He'd be d — d if his 
creditors should get a cent." Commenting on this, Mr. 
Choate said : — 

They have said, I know not for what reason, save to 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 461 

cast one more shadow over the sun of his prosperity, now 
transiently eclipsed, that he said something which sJwived 
a disposition to keep his creditors out of their money. 
This is, indeed, news to me and to my brother and to all 
the friends of David Pingree. No, the principles by 
which he amassed his vast fortune, are — the last cent to 
the creditor, the last plank, the last nail of the plank, all 
to him ; and it will be written on his grave, if the maxims 
of his life are there concentrated and engraved^ as the 
maxim of his all, "Justice to the Creditor" 

They say, the defendant company told him they 
w^ouldn't pay. They said they had suffered great losses 
by his neglect, by that culpable, irremediable idleness in 
the sj)ring months ; that if he was damaged, they were by 
him half bankrupt ; his neglect had done it all ; the fruit 
ye sowed, said they, shall ye not also reap ? The j-ears 
wasted in youth demand a heav}' reckoning in age ; if ye 
sow the storm, shall ye not also reap the whirlwind ? 

Such was Choate's eloquent rendering of a simple collo- 
quy. Probably the actual words which passed on the oc- 
casion, thus eloquently described, between the company and 
the plaintiff, were only a demand for pay and a reply that 
they couldn't pay, for they had been more seriously injured 
by him than benefited. 

Choate being for a corporation, closed very adoitly : 
" I know we're unpopular. It w^ould be vain to dissemble 
tliat ; every lawyer knows that. But I put this case uj)on 
the honor, upon the conscience, upon the oath of the jury. 
I am not about to appeal to your feelings, I rest upon your 
minds." 

Then having thrown them off of any expectation of 
an appeal to their feelings, he goes on : But let me say, 



462 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

that wlien it shall come to pass that contracts can be set 
aside, in a court of law, because they're unpopular, our 
whole social organization will tumble to the ground. 
Only let me remind you, that the house you live in, Mr. 
Foreman, is yours and not mine, only by contract. The 
bed you sleep on, and you and you (looking at the suc- 
cessive jurymen) is yours and not mine, only — by contract; 
and when, I say, it shall happen that contracts are legally 
evaded, there will be the real red republicanism in full riot 
among us — Red Republicanism ! yes, scarlet red. 

SINGLE PASSAGES AND FELICITIES. 

In a case in the Supreme Court, February 14, 1852, 
Mr. Charles B. Goodrich was the counsel opposed to Mr. 
Choate. He is an eminent lawyer, Choate, in arguing on 
law, misquoted an authority, by a slip of the tongue call- 
ing it " Goodrich's Reports, Vol. I." He instantly cor- 
rected his error of the name, but, turning with a patroniz- 
ing dignity to the opposite counsel, he added, " I don't 
doubt it's all in Goodrich, however." 

Any lawyer would have felt gratified by so felicitous a 
compliment. 

In the case of Mr. Thomas Perkins, a gentleman who 
was sued for accidentally running over a child, Mr. Choate 
said, in allusion to the testimony of his medical experts 
upon the condition of the child : " AVe have called. Gen- 
tlemen of the jury, the most venerable physicians — those 
whom you would call if your wife were smitten with the 
arrows of death ; whom the nation would call when the 
mortal agony was on the man they loved — the ' old man 
eloquent.' They speak one voice." 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS C HO ATE. 4G3 

Mr. Choate's acute analysis of evidence is well illus- 
trated by a commentary I remember bearing bim make in 
one of his cases, on a witness. 

Tbe Avitness testified tbat tbe plaintiff fell on a grate, 
in a soutberly direction. " But," said Cboate, " bere were 
no less tban three disturbing elements to prevent tbe wit- 
ness from seeing exactly bow be fell. First, bis fall ; sec- 
ond, bis instinctive struggle as be fell ; third, tbe rush of 
his companion to him." 

A captain of a whale ship was sued by his seamen for 
giving them short commons and bad treatment. Cboate 
w^as for the captain. The crew was a bad one, and be bad 
no difficulty in dealing with the charge of ill-treatment ; 
but with the poor fare be bad much more trouble. Tbe 
sailors appeared and testified in tbe case. 

Cboate asked one of them, " What did you have on 
Sunday ?" He replied, '• Duff." " What is duff ?" 
" Flour pudding and molasses." Next he asked, " What 
did you have on Tuesday ?" He replied, " Dundy funk." 
" What's dundy funk ?" said Cboate. " Mince meat and 
potatoes," was the reply. " What did you have on Thurs- 
day ?" was next asked. " Lob-scouse," was the reply. 
" What's lob-scouse ?" " It's a stew." 

It appeared, in the course of tbe trial, that tbe captain 
put mto the Cape de Verds to j^rocure vegetables. He suc- 
ceeded in procuring a large quantity of squashes, but could 
only obtain some dozen onions, of which be gave one to 
each of the crew and retained one himself. 

When Cboate came to this branch of the case, be said : 
" It is in evidence, Gentlemen of tbe jury, tbat we bad duff 
on Sunday, dundy-funk on Tuesday, and on Thursday 
that delicious compound, lob-scouse. And not only did 



464 EEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 

the captain fiirnisli an abundant supply of that esculent 
and succulent vegetable of the tropics, the squash ; but with 
his own hand — aye, with his own paternal hand — he di- 
vided the onions among that ungrateful and rebellious 
crew V 

A blacksmith had failed in business. A friend, to enable 
him to start once more, loaned him some iron. A creditor 
attached it at his forge, almost as soon as he lifted his 
hammer to work. The friendly owner sued in trover for 
his iron. Choate was for him. After picturing the cruelty 
of the proceeding, referring to the unnecessary harshness 
of the attaching sheriff, who stopped the blacksmith in the 
very act of shoeing a horse, Choate said : 

He arrested the arm of industry, as it fell upon the 
anvil ; he took the wind from the bellows that kindled tlie 
fire on the forge ; he stripped his shop of the material — 
the foundation of his labor — not leaving liim iron enough 
to make a horse shoe to put over the door to keep the 
witches off. 



PETITION FOR A RAILROAD FROM SALEM TO DANVERS. 

[Extracts from the Spcecli of Mr. Choate, before Legislative Committee, February 28, 

1851.] 

Mr. Chairman, 

I have, in the first j)lace, to represent that unfortunate, 
and yet I shall not hesitate to say, still meritorious corpo- 
ration, the Essex Railroad Corporation ; and then to en- 
counter the Salem and Lowell Railroad Corporation, backed 
up more or less by the Lowell and Lawrence Railroad 
Corporation, and also backed up by the Eastern Railroad 
Corporation. 



EEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 4G5 

Against this joint petition, covert or open, I have the 
honor to make this comprehensive and I trust decisive 
general reply ; that what these petitioners ask for is a 
parallel and competing railroad, in the strictest and most 
offensive sense, along its whole length, of exactly the same 
kind and the policy as those which the Legislature has de- 
cided so many times were not fit to be granted ; that there 
is not the least particle of necessity for it according to the 
doctrine which has been immemorially established by this 
government, that the evil shall outweigh the good ; and 
that all the good may be accomplished in another way, so 
as to avoid every one of the ills to be ap^^rehended from 
the course petitioned for. So that, therefore, I do respect- 
fully submit that to establish the road prayed for by this 
petition is to work a totally needless and a totally uncom- 
pensated mischief. That is in a general way the answer 
we have to make to at least the Salem and Lowell Railroad. 
To this I have in the briefest terms to invite .the candor of 
the Committee. 

In the first place, that it is the most bold, decided, and 
flagrant competing railroad is perfectly clear. In its whole 
length, it is all but a mathematical coincident with our 
own. It approaches within seven feet, for a considerable 
distance, of the track of our corporation. It dares to rest 
itself upon our very road-bed, too near, a great deal, ac- 
cording to the testimony of the experts in this case, for the 
operation of the engines ; too near for the lives and limbs 
of the officers and operatives, if their lives and limbs are 
of any account ; so close as to render it very dangerous to 
make any repairs or to clear off any obstructions from 
either road, while the other is in operation. 

I submit that this is a perfectly plain case of a paral- 
lel and competing railroad within the Commonwealth, and 

20* 



4G6 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

directly subject to the evils applicable to this species of 
property. 

One word in passing only. Permit me to say that it 
would be one of the most cruel disappointments of the 
most reasonable expectations of these hundreds of little 
proprietors whom I have the honor here to represent ; it 
would be one of the most extraordinary acts that has ever 
been witnessed in Massachusetts legislation, to comply 
with the request of the petitioners. When that road was 
projected, it was known that it w^as built for Lawrence 
business, and it is proved by the evidence in this case. It 
was seen that there was a new Lowell rising. And this 
Eailroad was to bring the products of the water power of 
that new Lowell to Salem harbor. The men and women, 
the five hundred dollar holders and the five dollar holders 
of the stock, led by a man whose name has been honored 
in this corporation, entered into this project which I have 
indicated. And a reasonable protection in the pursuit of 
that object you gave. I will not say, you break your faith 
if you take it away. All this strong theory is exploded by 
the decision of the judicial tribunal. But you gave us a 
reasonable assurance that, unless an exigency demanded, 
we might trust you. 

What have we before you ? We have this state of 
things. This inconvenience, this exigency of theirs may 
be, to a reasonable and probable certainty, removed in a 
better and in a less mischievous and injurious way. That 
is our answer to their exigency. And on that answer, I, 
with entire confidence, rely. A double track, now nearly 
constructed, with some comparativ^ely trivial but perfectly 
practical arrangements of details, will cure it instantly and 



REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 4G7 

perfectly. Yes, gentlemen, without the scandal of a rail- 
road laid for a couple of miles within seven feet of an- 
other ; without the scandal of a railroad, so that one shall 
occupy the very bed of another ; without a competition 
with ourselves ; without taking away the hope of a cor- 
poration by taking away its business ; without enabling a 
friend to nestle in its bosom, and then to stinf it to death ; 
without taking private property to the amount of a ftirthing ; 
without withdrawing private capital to the third of a mill ; 
without laying a railroad across another railroad on the 
-same grade, as if human life were of no value ; sparing us 
all these, the double track, together with such details as I 
shall show you, will pn)bably, will prohahly^ will proba- 
bly, and that is enough for the humm lawgiver, will, to a 
moral certainty, prohably exhaust every exigency that shall 
come before you, and cause, instead of uncounted mischief, 
unmixed good, which I am sure my friend on the other side 
will agree is better. 

That is all my case. And that is case enough. I put 
it to you that that single proposition upon the subject of 
the exigency, and the mode of meeting that exigency, 
argues and disposes of this case. 

We are in your hands ; not appealing to your sensi- 
bilities, not oifering to you votes ; but we are in your 
equity and in your justice. Extend to us only the settled 
policy of this Commonwealth against sharp parallel com- 
jjetition ; do not lay this fierce competitor in our very 
couch ; instead of taking our road-bed for him to lie down 
on, give us three, four or five per cent, for an income ; allow 
us to go into the market to get money ; and my life on it, 
on the testimony of men whom I have deemed all but 
oracular, that road wall come up agam upon its feet, and 



4G8 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CUOATE. 

you will gladden many a heart of wliicli yon will know 
nothing ; you will raise six hundred thousand dollars and 
give it as absolutely to the currents of life and circula- 
tion as if it were so much gold dug from the fathomless 
mines. 

JOSEPH lASIGI, et al.j vs. JAMES BROWN. 

This was a case tried in February, 1856, in the United 
States Circuit Court, in which the defendant was sued for 
damages for writing a letter to the plaintiff which induced 
him to sell to a certain person on credit, which person proved 
insolvent. It was not pretended that there was any moral 
intent to deceive. The case excited great interest, from 
the wealth and standing of the parties, as well as its rather 
unusual character. 

Mr. Choate began his argument, by saying that it was 
with difficulty he stood up before the jury, so unwell was 
he. I noticed myself how unusually wan and woe-begone 
he looked, but in some portions of the speech he rose to 
great heights of power and sj)lendor. His unfathomable 
eyes burned with a basilisk glare, as his feelings got the 
upper hand, and the thick folds of his pale countenance 
worked in strange contortions in the extremity of his pas- 
sions. The Bar was crowded with lawyers and Cambridge 
students. 

Mr. Choate began in his usually impressive and slow 
manner, apparently bov/ed down with the sense of the re- 
sponsibility resting upon him. His long jDale fingers trem- 
bled like the aspen leaf, as he turned over his enigmatical 
papers before him. He alluded in a highly comi)limentary 
way to Governor Clifford's (his adversary) argument, char- 
acterizing it as '"'' 'powerful^ brilliant, and beautiful." He 



EEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 469 

more than once afterwards called it a " silver argument." 
After his exordium he soon lighted up the fires of his mind. 
The following are a fl'w of the lighter flashes that 
played over the solid links of his argument. They were 
highly appreciated hy the persons present, and a friend 
took them down at the time. A good deal of their effect 
is lost here. 

Speaking of securities being given of houses in New 
York city to a person of Boston, which were burned down 
immediately, he screamed into the ears of the jury, ^' ivliat 
kind of securiUj do you call half a dozen loads of ashes 
and cinders, and a few controverted, policies ?" 

When speaking of his client's bales of wool, which he 
had sold to a person on the recommendation of his solv- 
ency by the defendant, who, to secure himself, had at- 
tached this very wool, he shouted, " Better had my client 
thrown the bales of wool out of the window into the dock 
at spring tide and water gathered by a hurricane, than to 
have done as he did." Again : '' Shall our wool go to 
wrap up the defendant's character from the cold ?" 

When reading and commenting upon the letter written 
by the defendant representing the corporation solvent, to 
which his client thereby became a creditor, he dwelt a good 
deal on tlie words "naked construction." Said he, "I like 
that word ' naked ;' it is a classical word — means clear, 
broad daylight ; naked truth." 

Alluding to a young man of whom the defendant de- 
sired it to ajipear that, on account of his inexperience and 
deep sense of morality he would do nothing positively 
wrong, he said with the keenest sarcasm, "A positive as- 
surance he found it, and being a young man (ironically) it 
touched his heart." This was said in so sly and queer a 
tone that every person in the room screamed with laughter. 



470 REMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CUOATE. 

The defendant, who, during Governor Clifford's argu- 
ment, looked up with a good deal of self-assurance, and 
seemed to feel certain of his entire right in the cause, 
now looked down-drooping all the time, as the orator 
went on. 

At 12 o'clock the Court took a recess of a few minutes, 
and when it again assembled' the judge announced that 
Mr. Choate was too ill to proceed, and adjourned over till 
Tuesday at 10 o'clock, a. m. 

Tuesday. Mr. Choate resumed his argument this morn- 
ing at 10 o'clock. He began laboring with all his energies 
to show the jury how great was the fraud done upon his 
client by Mr. Brown's letter to Mr. T. B. Curtis. " The 
letter was written to he read ;" he said, " as much as 
Washington's Farewell Address, or Junius' Letter to the 
King (which Edmund Burke said made the flesh crawl to 
read), or an advertisement over a door, was written to be 
read." 

Turning to Grovernor Clifford, he said : " There are a 
few lines which perhaps my brother Clifford, being a young 
man, may not remember, but which the Court may, much 
used by old Federalists in ' Torpedo Times,' to ridicule 
the administration of Mr. Jefferson, which ran thus : 

" ' We'll blow the Administration sky-high, 
But we'll do it with economt'e.' 

" These lines Mr. Brown [the defendant] has cbanged 
slightly, and they run thus : 

'"We'll blow the wool. merchants sky-high, 
But we'll do it confidentiaH?/.' " 

The effect was electrical on the hearers. The word 
"confidential," written at the head of the fatal letter, 
had so much importance in the case that it is impossible, 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 471 

outside, to give the slightest notion of its effect in the 
couplet which he framed for the occasion. The letter from 
Brown to Curtis was marked "confidential," and the ora- 
tor ingeniously interpreted it to mean (among many mean- 
ings he gave it for his own purpose) that Curtis might 
show it to whom he pleased, but not to mention from 
whom it came ; that confidential, in the sense it had in 
the letter, meant that the writer himself should not he 
known. "What was the letter designed for .^" he shouted. 
" Did Mr, Brown think Mr. Curtis was going to run up 
and down the street with his finger on the side of his nose 
and hold forth to all that Orin Thomson was solvent, and 
that he knew him to he so, and Mr. Brown kept in the 
dark ? No ! Mr. Curtis is a man of honor, and would re- 
j)ly to Mr. Brown as the youthful Alexander Hamilton 
did to the great Washington — ' that he venerated him, 
that he respected him, but he never would be his lackey.' 
If the house of Mr. Curtis had burned down, and tlie plain- 
tiff had found such a letter — lost amidst the confusion of 
burning — he would not have presented it as an inducement' 
to him to make sales to Thomson & Co. No, the defend- 
ant could then reply, ' Thou canst not say I did it.' " 

To show how a person might make a mortgage of his 
property and at the same time be worth as much or more 
than before (a circumstance pertinent to this case), Gov- 
ernor Clifford, in his argument, made the following suppo- 
sition : " Suppose," said he, " that I should mortgage my 
house that overlooks a fine bay in the southern part of 
the State, and is perhaps worth $20,000, for the sum of 
$15,000, and with that $15,000 I should buy an estate 
worth $30,000, should I be worse off, or poorer, because I 
had mortgaged my house ?" 

Choate answered this, to my great astonishment, in 



47-2 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

three complete refutations of it, as it applied to the prop- 
erty of Thomson & Co., and this was the property to which 
Mr. Clifford had likened it. 

, "First," said he, (and he straightened up his gaunt form 
as he spoke) " the property was mortgaged to pay an old 
debt — to pay for a dead horse. Secondly, it was mortgaged 
to pay a new debt to an extent far beyond its value ; and, 
thirdly, it was pledged to meet future liabilities to an enor- 
mous amount." It is not clear, from what is here stated, 
how some of this could well be, and I am not familiar 
enough with the circumstances to state the sums for which 
the property was mortgaged. 

His peroration was very impressive ; and the audience 
hung fascinated on his closing words, in breathless silence, 
as if they were the last syllables of an unearthly visitant. 
He made a very apt quotation from " The Merchant of 
Venice ;" and speaking of his clients, one of whom, Mr. 
lasigi, was from Greece, and the other, Mr. Goddard, from 
New England, he said : "It matters not, Gentlemen of the 
jury, who it is seeks for justice ; it is as much one's as 
another's ; as much Mr. Goddard's, the son of a Boston 
mechanic, as it is due to the other, an adopted son from 
the bright shores of the Egean Sea." 



A PLAINTIFF AGAINST MAJOR-GENERAL EDMANDS, AND 
THE CITY OF BOSTON. 

January 30, 1856. — Mr. Clioate yesterday, in the hear- 
ing before the full Bench of the Supreme Court, in the 
suit brought by a plaintiff against Major General Edmands 
and others, for injuries received by the soldiery at the 
rendition of Anthony Burns, made some fine points, which 
I preserved add committed to paper. 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 473 

He said : May it please your Honors, I never voted for 
Mayor Smith, but I now vote him my tlianks for doing 
just Avhat they charge ui)on hnn; so ought every man who 
owns a house in Boston ; so ought every man who liad a 
chikl in Boston, or a friend in Boston on that day. 

What ! shall the City be allowed the privilege, ac- 
corded in every refined, and delicate, and decorous civihza- 
tion, of closing her streets against all unseemly intrusion, 
whenever she moves in funeral or festive solemnity or pa- 
geantry, and the State has her robes on, and shall she not 
stop her streets when Death yawns and Terror speaks in 
the faces of the nudtitude ? 

Who can go back noiu and see and inquire what causes 
Mayor Smith had of reasonable apprehenson that there 
Avould be danger of bloody riot ? Can we look again on 
that threatening face of a menacing crowd ? Can we hear 
the sounds and see the sights which then rung and flashed 
on ear and eye ? 

That meeting in Faneuil Hall ! They counseled no 
violence. Oh no — no violence ! The dial spoke not, but 
it made most manifest signs, and pointed to the stroke of 
murder; — three hours afterwards, Batchelder was hilled I 
Oh no — no violence ! no violence ! 

Mr. Ellis, counsel for plaintiff, here started to his feet, 
■with great excitement of manner, and interrupted. The 
Chief Justice rumbled forth something inaudible ; the 
spectators stared. Burly and bluff John P. Hale, who was 
present as senior counsel for plaintiff, rose also ; and for a 
moment all was stir and sensation in this court drama ; in 
the midst of all which Mr. Choate stood erect, rampant, 
defiant, and with dilated nostril, as if snuffing up the au, 
in disdainful and daring arrogance. 



474 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

MARINE INSURANCE CASE. 
[George S. Hillard for Plaintifti Eafus Cboate for the Defendant or Insurance Company.] 

Mr. Clioate, for the defendant, made two principal 
points, and I took down some of his argument : 

1st. The vessel was stowed in a manner to make her un- 
seaworthy. 

2d. She was not lost by a peril enumerated in the 
policy. 

He said : The vessel after leaving the smooth water of 
Boston harbor encountered the eternal motion of the ocean, 
which has been there from creation, and will be there till 
land and sea shall be no more. But she was so laden, and 
her pumps were so bad, she was no better than a coffin for 
all on board. 

She went down the harbor, said he, a painted and per- 
fidious thing ; soul freighted, but a coliin for the living — a 
coffin for the dead. Meaning thereby to intimate that she 
was not seaworthy at the start. 

Again, he said, They say the entire demoralization of 
the crew, disheartened, etc., was a cause justifying her 
abandonment. What, was the forecastle to determine the 
abandonment .? I have heard that always in all great en- 
counters, on land or sea, with the enemy or the elements, 
the rank and file have always flinched. It is the officers 
who have upheld the morale ; and, therefore, in all the great 
engagements of every nation, English, German, or the more 
gallant French, our own, every one, — the mortality of bat- 
tle has always been severest on the officers ; and I have to 
say, that this Yankee captain somewhat failed of his duty 
to his Yankee ship, in yielding to this demoralized crew. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE, 475 



SUNDRY PETITIONS 

[For a railroafi by different routes, from Boston to the valley of the Blaekstone, in Massa- 
chusetts. 1S47. Heard before a Committee of the Legislature.] 

Notes taken at the licaring by a friend ; — Mr. Choate, 
for the petitioners of the Perkins route, closed substan- 
tially as follows : — 

Give us this road, Mr. Chairman (alluding to Colonel 
Bullock, of Worcester, chairman of the Committee on Kail- 
ways and Canals on the jDart of the House), and your name 
will live for ever in the memory of the peoi3le of Worcester ; 
for we propose to locale our road in Bluckstone, Massachu- 
setts, and not in Woonsocket, in the State of Ehode Island 
and Providence Plantations. Give it to us, and you will 
secure for yourself an immortality that it falls to th^ lot of 
few to attain ; give it to us, and we will build a magnifi- 
cent city in that old county of Worcester, worthy of the age 
in which we live ; give it to us, and we will bring into ac- 
tion the miglity but sleeping energies of nature ; — water 
enough, sir, for tiuo Lowells — not one — two. 

In reference to the Walpole route, which was a little 
and short spur of railroad, crossing from one location to 
another, and of which, while seeming indifferent, his clients 
were really very much afraid, he said ; — Pardon me, Mr. 
Chairman and gentlemen, in presuming to occupy your time 
for a single moment, for a single moment only, to barely 
allude to that insignificant project, known here before you 
as the Walpole route ; so ably represented by my brother, 
Mr. John C. Park. Less than thirty seconds will suffice 
me in saying what I have to say in regard to this project 
of so little consequence to us. For I believe, sir, that 
Goldsmith must have had this very identical route in his 
mind when he said 



476 REMINISCENCES OF RUEUS CHOATE, 

" Man wants but little here below, 

Kor wants that little longy (Great laughter.) 



In reference to the Pettee route, lie observed : Allow me 
now to lay aside the advocate for a single moment, a single 
moment, Mr. Chairman, and speak as a citizen of Boston. 

As a citizen of Boston, I protest against the establish- 
ment of this gigantic and stupendous nuisance, (proposed 
depot building on Charles street, near the Common) to be 
placed in that beautiful locality. I speak not for the 
wealth or the aristocracy of Beacon street, but for the 
masses ; the men, women and children who desire to breathe 
the air of heaven, undisturbed and unmolested, after the 
toils, labors and excitements of the day, upon this beauti- 
ful Common of ours, the pride and ornament oi our city. 
Blessed be the memory of that public beneflictor who gave 
us this charming spot, surrounded Avith such wise restric- 
tions ! And I beseech you, I implore you, to look with un- 
favorable eyes upon any project which will transfer from 
our business centers the Imrly burly of all creation to the 
Western Avenue. Listen, I beg of you, with unwilling 
ears, to any proposition that will so seriously, so effectually, 
so disastrously annoy us, and disturb the peace, the com- 
fort, the happiness of this entire community. Plant this 
depot there, and we will bid farewell, a long farewell to all 
quiet and repose, and our eyes will behold the inauguration 
of chaos and confusion. Protect us from this desecration, 
this terrible disaster which threatens us, this terror incog- 
nitus, and the blessings of thousands of the living will be 
upon your heads, and the benedictions of posterity will be 
upon the memory of this generation. 

But grant the prayer of Mr. Pettee, and where there is 
peace and quiet and order now, you will have the awful 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 477 

glare and thundering pace of engines — steam, fire, thunder, 
lightning, Stromboli, whistles, Etna, Vesuvius — Hell itself, 
sir, will break loose ! — and all this for 3Ir. Fettee's rail- 
road ! 

DESCRirTION OF THE TRIAL AND ARGUMENT OF THE 
DALTON DIVORCE CASE. 

There have been but few cases tried in our Boston 
courts, which have excited more wide and raj^t interest 
than did the libel for a divorce brought by Mr. Frank Dal- 
ton against his wife (born Miss Helen Grove). Some time 
before, a sort of intrigue had been supposed to have been 
discovered by the husband between his Avife and a youth 
named Sumner. Upon this discovery, the wife had been 
compelled by her husband to get Sumner to the house, 
and there he was terribly beaten by him. The youth went 
home after the beating, was taken sick, and soon died. 
Dalton was tried for the assault, but it was not clear that 
the deceased died directly from the effects of the beating ; 
and he was not convicted of manslaughter. There was 
then a reconciliation between husband and wife. Subse- 
quently, however, from some cause, the husband left her, 
and filed his libel for divorce. Mr. Choate appeared for 
the lady, and against the divorce. 

The whole argument was most carefully reported pho- 
nographically, and as it was of such public interest, it will 
doubtless be found in the collection of his works. I pre- 
fer, therefore, rather than to print any imperfect portions 
of it, to give an outline description of it, which I wrote at 
the time for the Boston Traveler. 

The Dalton Drama and Rufus Choate. — While 
Camille has been playing at our Boston Theater, the Dal- 



478 llEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS C HO ATE 

ton tliama has been playing at our Boston Court House. 
Both have been greeted with tlironged houses. The lat- 
ter, liowever, being a sin, real, not painted, and a life-long 
agony, has properly provoked far more attention and criti- 
cism. 

The renown of the advocate of the wife's honor in this 
case, Mr. Choate, added fuel to the fire of burning curi- 
osity ; and when, on Tuesday, the evidence closed, the 
public interest was on tiptoe. It has rarely happened 
even to him to rise in a case upon which so intently, and 
for so long a time, the public eye had been riveted. Day 
after day, during all the examination of the witnesses, the 
court room had been crowded ; and as each new leaf of 
scandal, or shame, or falsehood, was turned over, the pulses 
of the eager auditors throbbed in unison, and the looks of 
the galleries indicated that they were ravenous for more. 
But the audience was not merely that Court room auditory. 
Every day the great public itself, the whole city, had looked 
in on every detail of the case, through the open windows 
of the newspapers. They had watched closely every fluc- 
tuation of the family revealings, and calculated, like 
another but greater Jury, the weight and issue of the tes- 
timony. There was a double motive for this : first, there 
was the craving natural to man- for scandalous details ; 
and then there was the natural solicitude of grave men 
and heads of families, to know if even New England, iron- 
bound in Puritanism, was relaxing her decorum ; and was 
besinnin": to walk a little under " the insidious light and 
the delirious music of houses of pleasure," as Choate 
called it. 

In the midst, then, of this vast expectancy ; in presence 
of thousands, in presence, as it were, of the assembled cit}'- ; 
in presence of attentive New England, the advocate rose to 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 479 

speak ; but wider even than our section of country, were 
his words to he winged ; for Mr. Dana, in replying to him, 
truly said, alluding to Cohurn (a witness whom Choate 
denounced), that the victim who had been smitten by the 
bolt of Choate's denunciation was lost ; he mio;ht go to 
the East or to the West, in his endeavors to reform, but 
that tremendous invective would always blacken before 
him, and his reputation would track him with the fatal 
footsteps of Nemesis. 

On Tuesday morning, at an early hour, every avenue to 
the Court room was literally blockaded with people. While 
the crowd within were waiting patiently for the argument 
to commence, crammed so closely that men almost stood on 
each other, the Sheriff provoked uproarious laughter by 
rising with the gilt insignia of his Sheriffalty about him, 
and respectfully announcing, that those gentlemen who 
were on the second wing might have " leave to withdraw." 
Considering that five dollars was said to have been offered 
for a standing place, and that, once in, no man could get 
out without becoming a shadow, this business-like intima- 
tion was certainly droll. 

When Judge Merrick came in, Mr. Choate stood up. 
To the apparent disappointment of the prodigious expecta- 
tion which had reckoned on an immediate outbreak of ora- 
torio fireworks, he commenced to read to the Judge, in a 
very quiet manner, some extracts from an old law book ; 
then, turning to the Jury, who sat as if braced to receive 
a series of torpedo shocks, he began in a grave but quiet 
colloquial way, as if he was only button-holing a man in 
conversation in the street. 

His first day was occupied in presenting general consid- 
erations, tending to disarm hostility and propitiate favor 
for his fair client's cause, who sat behind him, not exactly 



480 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

'• like Niobe, all tears" — tears only occasionally ; there 
were tears enough, however, to fill out the picture which 
Mr. Dana subsequently implored the Jury might not turn 
out to be the history of the case — "a few tears, the elo- 
quent breath of an orator, and all is over for the husband." 
In this fii'st day, also, the advocate for the wife seemed 
utterly to demolish that whole story which, most of all, has 
shocked and aftrighted the public ; the story that in a re- 
spectable family in our midst, the crime of infanticide was 
as common as childbirth ; and that time after time, one 
daughter after another of that house was " subjected to 
the butcher knife of Dr. Calkins" or some other male or 
female operator. Finally, in this first day, was presented 
also the " two great views" upon which Mr. Choate rested 
his case ; first, that Mrs. Dalton never really loved her 
lover, but, though dizzy with the intoxicating incense of 
his adoration she always really loved her husband ; and 
second, that after all the revelations which had been made, 
and upon which this case rested, Dalton, the husband, had 
himself adjudged her not guilty, by taking her to his bosom 
to live with him, for several weeks. 

These two views, thus suggested, became the key-note 
of the whole argument. Much else of course was said, the 
mass of evidence was contemplated from many standpoints ; 
but ever and anon, like the dominant air of an opera, this 
strain returned ; now the performer compressed it, now he 
expanded and prolonged it with his unequaled witchery of 
words ; and so it rose and fell before the minds of the Jury, 
through the introduction, the argument, the appeal — over- 
ture, concertos, and all. From whatever angle he looked 
at the facts, from whatever chords he struck the tones, you 
heard ever the same recurring strain, — Nellie still loved 
him, Frank believed her guiltless. Therefore, of course, 



KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 481 

the inference would be natural, if she still loved her wedded 
husband, all the time of the intimacy with Sumner, it was 
mere boy's-play and not guilt ; therefore, also, if he^ who 
of all men best knew how to try her, had at first adjudged 
her not criminal, the Jury should adjudge her not criminal. 

It was very interesting to see the art and the address 
with which, in every light, the tissues of these two thoughts 
were shot across the threadwork of the argument, and to 
hear with what perpetual variety the same monotonous 
tones were rung. In speaking of the fond, trusting letters 
written by the husband to the wife, in the murderer's cell, 
he described them as "One long sigh — one long, sad strain 
of music — that music, ' Home, sweet home, and you its 
destined idol.' " Her letters to him, in reply, he painted 
as charged with a deep pathos of affection, — such as no 
Confessions of Rousseau, no Abelard, no Heloisa, could 
throw into the shade. 

The first day having been occupied in stating his own 
case, in the second day of his argument he discussed the 
adversary's case. 

It would be in vain to try to describe how he explained 
away the damning letters from " Nellie" to Sumner ; two 
of which had been preserved and proved. " I must read 
them to the jury," he said — " /, who am fellcn into the 
sere and yellow leaf ; when they should better be read by 
my curled and handsome friends, the other counsel in the 



case." 



In accounting for John H. Coburn's seeming hostility 
to Mr. Gove, the father of Mrs. Dalton, will anybody who 
was present ever forget, with what a manner he intimated 
that Coburn was trying to make something out of him ; 
— either money, or, as Gove was a clothing merchant, even 
a suit of clothes. " Why," said the witty advocate, with 

21 



482 II E M I X I S C E N C E S OF R U F U S C H O A T E . 

a humor worthy of Curran, " Coburn said to himself, ' I 
see pantaloons in the distance.' " 

His defense of some imprudent conduct into which Mr. 
Gove seemed to have been led by his feelings, and which 
bore the semblance of tampering with a juryman, was ad- 
mirable. He pictured him as haunted day and night with 
this case, and the fate of this daughter. " In his dreams 
it shadows his pillow — dreams, did I say ? he sleeps not, 
save under the anodyne draught ; and is it passing strange 
that his agony of solicitude should unman him — that the 
father should conquer the citizen ?" 

It was very essential to his case that the gulf which 
yawns between " imprudence" and adultery, should gape as 
wide as possible ; and he stretched it, till one might almost 
think the imprudent woman wandering upon its margin 
" by the insidious light," was less likely than the jjrudent 
one, who walked afar off, to fall into the abyss. Of the 
imprudent flirt, we speak, he said, in terms of disapproba- 
tion ; of the adulteress, we sing, if we say anything, " Oh 
no, we never mention her !" And her presence in our 
houses is hardly less astounding, than the sight of a goblin 
damned. 

Perhaps the funniest passage in the whole was where 
he showed how Coburn, apprehensive of cross-examination 
in Court, got the erysipelas in his feet ; and thereu})on (al- 
luding to the taking of his deposition, which contradicted 
his testimony afterwards given) "We sent Drs. Durant 
and Dana to him ; they cured the patient, — biit tlioj IdUed 
the loitness." (Mr. Durant and Mr. Dana were the other 
lawyers in the case.) 

Take this argument of Mr. Choate as a whole, it is to 
be considered a great intellectual effort. It was more 
severely intellectual and logical, even, than it was orna- 



11 E M I N I S C E N C E S OF R U F U S C H A T E . 483 

mental and passionate. Througliout the whole it will be 
difficult to iincl any passage of description, invective, or 
pathos, that does not tend directly to, and help on, the 
main current of the argument. It does not contain any 
single passages of such memorable beauty as Erskine's In- 
dian, in the Stockdale libel case ; nor such as the same 
advocate gave in the case of Howard vs. Bingham ; that 
famous case in which, though appearing for the defend- 
ant, the alleged seducer, he continued to represent him 
as the party sinned against ; as defrauded by the husband 
of a love which he had cherished for the ladv, for vears be- 
fore the husband saw her. But it must be remembered, 
that, in this Dalton case, the advocate had circumstances 
against him ; and that the array of the higher thoughts by 
which alone noble rhetorical flights must mount, was barred 
from him. This argument has, however, full as nuich sus- 
tained rhetorical and more logical jiower than Curran's 
argument in the great case of seduction, Massey vs. the 
Marquis of Headford ; in which the husband recovered 
$50,000. 

Those good people who imagine that, because they have 
listened to Mr. Choate, in the delivery of a lecture, they 
have heard Choate, the orator-advocate, would have con- 
fessed their blunder had they been in Court on this occasion. 
To see our great advocate in one of these displays is a 
theatric spectacle. When Pinkney spoke, all the belles of 
the city went to Court, said Judge Story to the Law 
School ; and when our Pinkney speaks, every mortal gets 
into Court who can. Then to follow him in his vaiying 
appeals to every vulnerable point of the Jury's human 
nature — the mighty stream of his unbroken volubility, — his 
black eye burning blacker than night — now turning to the 
Judge, now brandishing his arm over the head of tlie op- 



484 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

posite counsel — now marching up to and confronting the 
" twelve men," and now lifting his glance as if ohtesting 
Heaven — take it all in all, we may well exclaim, as the 
Portuguese rhapsodist comically said, astonished out of 
himself at the surpassing beauty of the Azores — " Oh for 
a portrait painter, to jjaint the scene — terrestrial and celes- 
tial." 

In this case Mr. Choate succeeded, for the Jury did not 
divorce the j^arties. And it is understood that they are 
now living happily together in a distant State, 

TILTON vs. TREMONT MUTUAL LNSUEANCE COMPANY. 

Mr. Choate was senior counsel for the plaintiff in this 
case. He spoke nearly four hours, in an unusual strain of 
logic and reasoning. Chief Justice Shaw" twice told him 
he must be brief ; and at last stopped him. The baffled 
reasoner declared he left the case with the Jury " unfinished 
and incomplete," to use his words. He indulged very little 
in rhetoric, and the following instances which he used very 
hajipily, a friend who was present, took down : 

" The Captain of the ship feeling himself upon the back 
of so noble an animal put in the spurs and gave her the 
reins." This was in allusion to the "clipper shi})," which 
he alleged, as plaintiff, had been strained and injured by 
the perils of the sea and the ardor of. the young Master in 
making a quick voyage. 

Again, in allusion to the damaged appearance of the 
ship at Rio Janeiro, where she was repaired, he asked in a 
terrific tone, " If a strong man goes forth upon a journey, 
and at the end is found bleeding, — what may we ask was 
the cause ? Is it not clear that something overtook him 
on his way ?" 



REMINISCENCES OF HUE US CHOATE. 485 

He quoted from "Macbeth/' where he "calls up the 
master and servants," and applied it to the defendants. 

In speaking of the sailors, in respect to whom the de- 
fendants' counsel made a taunt, because he did not produce 
them on the witness stand, he said, "Must we chase the 
eagle to his eyrie ? — these sailors who have flown to the 
ends of the earth !" 

In following him. Governor Clifford, who was the op- 
posite counsel, commenced by saying, "I will not attem])t 
to measure his (Mr. Choate's) power, any more than I 
would measure the power of the sea itself, which he will 
tell you is immeasurable." 



SHAW vs. WORCESTER RAILROAD. 

il/ay 7, 1858. — Yesterday (one year before he was to 
die), Choate argued Shaw vs. Worcester liailroad, in a 
manner worth v his palmiest davs. I noted down extracts. 

Speaking of the railroad station house, he said, " There 
was no baggage-man there, no station-man there, no friendly 
flag-man there ; — for three quarters of an hour it was as 
lonely as the desert behind Algiers." 

I was struck, for the thousandth time, with the intel- 
lectual change his appearance undergoes in the tempest and 
shock of his sjjeaking ; his brow lifts, swells, expands, 
tightens, and grows whiter with the crowding and tension 
of his thoughts. 

Once, when he was interrupted in making an acute 
point to the jury by the adverse counsel, he paused a mo- 
ment as if to hear the interruption and parry it ; and as 
he did so, stooping his head toward the rail before the jury 
on which his hand rested, and turning his dark eyes toward 



4So KEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

the interruption, his look was such as to remind one viv- 
idly of Booth's Richard III. 

As illustrating the spell with which his thought pos- 
sesses him, and his hearers also, I noticed this ; he paused 
before an emjjhatic sentence he was about to utter, and 
atually clapped his hands three times, in the same rate 
of time as that in which he had been speaking ; and yet 
nobody laughed, and the sentence was made only more 
effective. 

Once in the course of his speech he turned round, and 
happened to fix his glaring eyes on an auditor, connected 
with the railroad, so fiercely and concentratedly and almost 
demoniacally, — he seemed to strike at the poor man with 
each sentence. 

In the course of his argument, he said, " Grentlemen of 
the jury you are bound to try the right of this plaintiff by 
the head, and feel the injury in the heart. He (the injured 
man, whose widow sued) has gone to his account. After 
life's fitful fever he sleeps well — there let him rest. Ho 
■was a husband worth keeping alive, or killing on a railroad. 

We want justice ; not the ten thousandth part of a 
farthing from pity ; not feeling, but the coldest justice. 

On came the terrible glare of that engine — that fire of 
hell ! There was no curving board of warning to him who 
would cross that track. There was no proud Arch to bid him 
stay — no friendly flag-man. They blew no whistle — that 
would have startled all but the dead ; then comes the col- 
lision — the wagon and the engine ; and it is not the giant 
that dies, but the weak. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 487 

From that moment, this Branch Raih'oad has been to 
tlie main Raih'oad, an ivy that has fed npon a j)i'incely" 
trunk, and sucked the verdure out of it. 

Is tills a tale to be told on a winter's evening ? The 
grave tells no tales. 

My friend (the adverse counsel) whose courage no more 
than his ingenuity tails him in a bad case, thinks he has a 
witness, and a theory. Better had that witness slept in 
an early grave, witli the engineer, than upon that stand 
morally and judicially to have lied. 

This case was tried several times ; the Court every 
time setting aside the verdict, or allowing Excejitions. 
Each time the jury gave higher damages ; finally it was 
tried for plaintiff l)y Henry Durant, Esq. The jury gave 
over twenty thousand dollars damages, and it ivas 'pa'id. 

With this last case, the author closes this Chapter of 
his work. Although he has in his possession great num- 
bers of M.V. Choate's Speeches, he does not insert even the 
most brilliant extracts from them, which he himself heard; 
preferring to leave that field of the great orator's reported 
Speeches, entirely untouched, to his family ; from whom his 
formal Biography and Works are expected. 

These Forensic Arguments, however, which make up 
this chapter, the author has here given somewhat fully ; 
because most of them exist nowhere but in his own MSS. 
or MSS. given to him l)y friends ; and unless here pub- 
lished, they would probably soon perish even from the 
traditions of Court street. 

It must be reuKniibered, however, l)y the reader, in 



488 REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 

estimating tliem, that tliese passages are after all only Ex- 
tracts ; as the size of the book precluded the publication 
of the arguments in full. And also, allowance must be 
made for the absence of that magical manner, which trans- 
figured Mr. Choate, in his most rapt passages, into a posi- 
tive apparition of splendor. 



CHAPTER IX. 

]\IISCELLANEOUS REMINISCENCES. 

The Lectm-es of Mr. Choate, as might have been ex- 
ixicted, were very hrilHaiit, erudite and fervid. Every year 
or two he would find time to write one for the Boston 
Mercantile Library Association, or some other Lyceum au- 
dience. He gave one in 1S5G, on " The Old Age of the Poet 
Rogers." Rogers had recently died, and the thoughts of the 
world had for a moment been turned to him. Mr. Choate, 
indeed, almost always took his lectm'e theme from some 
topic to which recent events had given a new and immedi- 
ate interest. 

I wrote at the time the following brief description of 
this Lecture, and the manner of its delivery, for a nows- 
])apcr ; and it may give the reader, now, some idea of its 
character and effect. 

description of MR. ciioate's lecture on "the old 

AGE OF THE POET ROGERS." 

We wish to consider Mr. Choate's Address after a few 
hours have intervened between the delivery and our review 
of it, lest the enthusiasm of the advocate-orator should too 
partially affect our judgment. And yet, npon some little 
reflection, and in a cooler mood than that in which he left 
us when he closed, we find it difficult to disembarrass our- 
selves of a sympathetic excitement, the moment we fairly 
attack the subject. He is so far beyond all our other ora- 
tors in passionate and inspiring fervor, he so lifts us to 

21* 



490 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

commanding elevations of sulblimity, and he contrives to 
engage the sympathies and ahuost the affections (certainly 
the whole emotional part of one's nature) to such a degree, 
that every one who writes of him must wa-ite either as a 
frigid foe or a warm, sympathetic, and fevoring friend. 
The lecture which he has just delivered before four thou- 
sand people, crowded — yes, consolidated together — three 
thousand of whom only could gain a seat, yet which held 
their rapt attention for an hour and a half, so that eyes 
were riveted as by magnetic polarity upon him, breath al- 
most suspended to catch his faintest accent, and the whole 
vast, solid mass, as still as death all the time, one or two 
faintino- women being carried out without in the least dis- 
tracting their fixed and fascinated gaze ; and at the close 
no one, we venture to say, feeling otherwise than anxious 
to hear that voice still longer, as it pealed over the multi- 
tude, trumpet-like, in its clear, ringing, and rousing tones 
of emphasis, or sunk in a measured cadence which even the 
studied declaimer might have envied, save that it sank too 
low — the Address which accomplished this, must be desci'v- 
ing of more critical scrutiny and praise than is rendered by 
simply saying, " Oh, it was Rufus Choate, with a great 
reputation, and therefore they attended/' 

We think great crowds may be attracted to a hall by a 
great reputation, but unless the celebrated person who is 
the magnet possesses some charm of oratory, their attention 
will, after a little while, become listless, and their attend- 
ance discontinued ; in other words, they will go out, to 
the consternation of the speaker. When Cassius M. Clay 
lectured here, on " Beauty," there was a throng; but they 
soon dwindled away under his somnolent violence of inter- 
rupted energy and sing-song superficiality of thought. But 
as we cast our eye over the thousands before Mr. Choate, 



REMINISCENCES OF EUFUS C HO ATE. 491 

we saw thciu all lookinsr like a con2;re2:ation of slatiiCB, 
spell-bound. 

The gorgeousness of liis imagery, and its wonderful 
profusion, we think, somewhat masked and garlanded the 
frame-work of the thought ; and to that, and not to a pov- 
erty of thought, or confusion of point, is to be attributed 
any want of an exact final impression of the leading ideas, 
of which some may possibly have been conscious. 

Stripped of its ornamental glories, the abstract of his 
lecture, would be in the first place a very becoming dep- 
recation of any comparison between his effort and the 
great "occasional" display of Mr. Everett, "conducting us 
through sounding galleries to Washington, upon the seat of 
gold ;" (the famous Washington Address.) Then he opened 
an appropriate and learned consideration of the various 
kinds of the Old Age of genius ; the philosophic, the learned, 
the practical, the poetical ; and — last of all — the peculiarly 
felicitous and poetical evening of Eogers' old age, closing 
amid delijihtful memories and still more delichtful friend- 
ships, and surrounded by every thing that was graceful and 
ornamental in art or letters ; an old age wdien a stream — 
full and gentle — of wise thoughts, exquisite emotions, and 
images of amaranthine bloom, lighted by the immortal 
flame of beauty, flowed on for ever beneath the arches of 
his mind. From this, he passed easily to consider, with a 
few vivid touches wdiich summoned them right up in bold 
relief, the radiant circle of poets of whom Eogers was not 
the least. He pictured the agitations and delights of mind 
with which their dawning was witnessed ; how ujion the 
arrival of a " Fourth Canto of Childe Harold," or a " Co- 
rinna" of De Stacl, expectation and ecstacy w^re succes- 
sively on tip-toe ; and all those ecstacies of the readers of 
that race of genius, he boldly announced himself the de- 



492 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CIIOATE. 

fender of. "I come to say," said he, " that that ardor of 
delight with which we packed them on our little hook- 
shelves in college, or enthroned them in lordly libraries was 
all due, and not in the least extravagant." 

Then very justly, he drew the age in its leading charac- 
teristics, in which and by which they were nurtured — the 
thunder and Iii2;htnin2; of the hour of the Revolution of 
France, w^hich charged them with all its electricity ; that 
hour when, in the earthquake voices of her victories, France 
looked down from her house-tops on the desecration of 
altars and the marvelous march of the little Lieutenant of 
Corsica. How much such an age as this, filled with revo- 
lutions in speculative and practical matters, must have 
influenced those impressible children of genius, he briefly 
but pointedly indicated. Who, of them all, was the best 
and brightest, he found it impossible to tell, as each gained 
peculiar prominence at the moment of its perusal, but his 
own mind ran to Scott, as the foremost claimant of the 
laurel ; and now followed a triumphant and passionate 
defense of Scott from the sentimentalizing depreciation of 
Carlyle. And liere it was, the advocate habit broke out ; 
for no sooner did Mr. Choate find himself assailing even a 
shadowy foe, than his eye began to blaze brighter, and his 
tones to swell and thunder ; and when, in a grand, rising 
climax, he pictured Scott's heroes as inspiring heroism by ' 
the divine awakening influence of a nobility of martyrdom, 
to which the sleep and death-march of Leonidas and his 
Spartans was " a revel and a dance to the Dorian mood of 
soft recorders," we do not believe but what the dense mass 
of mind and matter before him would have risen up unani- 
mously, and voted him the eminent laurel of eloquence ; as 
he had just before appropriated to Walter Scott the laurels 
of literature by a " two-thirds vote of all who speak the 



KEMINISCENCES OF KUFUS CHOATE. 493 

Englisli tongue." Wo have heard great bursts of elo- 
quence and impassioned cadences, but we doubt if we were 
ever affected, for a moment, more sensibly than then. It 
was literally almost as if a vast wave of the united feelin^'- 
of the whole multitude surged up under every one's arm-pits. 

The poets thus brilliant, thus begotten, and thus led, 
he now left for a momentary but apt allusion to the tro- 
phies of our own country in historical and poetical fields ; 
and paid a final tribute to the poets whom he best loved 
on this side of the water, by setting the names of Dana, 
Bryant, and " Hiawatha," in a closing constellation of 
serene radiance. 

Now, tlie hastiest reader, we think, will see here a germ 
of thought symmetrically developed. The poet Rogers, 
liis " set," their education, our choice among them ; and, 
lastly, American Bards not forgotten. 

The most remarkable thing about it was, after all, that 
a man of most absorbing professional cares and occupations 
should show himself so thoroughly " posted up" in all 
poetical themes, names, such histories, and criticisms, and 
be able to blend them all, anjid pressing, immediate jiro- 
fessional calls, into such a gorgeous day-dream of beautiful 
thought. It is comparatively easy for a man of leisure, 
taste and means, with a noble library at command, to 
digest a discourse which shall glitter with gems, and to 
deliver it with an art which shall baffle criticism ; but for 
a man who has to fight a battle in Courts every day, and 
who has thousands of dollars and hundreds of clients hang- 
ing on every step he takes — for him to give a Discourse, 
which by description, by quotation, by allusion, by criti- 
cism, by single words snatched from choice sentiments and 
immortal sentences, by biographical and historical refer- 
ences — by all the indicia possible, shows that he has the 



494 llEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

instant mastery of a whole world of topic and thought, 
which alone might be the all-sufficient province of a great 
intelligence — this to us was something like a marvel. 

Some one said of Gibbon, that he was great, but that 
he might have been made out of a corner of the mind of 
Edmund Burke ; so we say of any oratorical rival who 
may be suggested to this Prince of the Forum ; who real- 
izes in his own person the famous definition of Cicero — that 
an Orator should be one universally learned, and able to 
master the special hero of every branch, in his own speciality. 

But quite as much, we wonder at that power which 
could thus go back over and apparently revive every thing 
imaginative he had ever read ; bring u]3 the thoughts and 
associations kindred and apt thereto ; and by such power 
of rapid description, by a single sentence sometimes, by a 
few suggestive words, or by one or two apt quotations, 
phrases or paragraphs, all melting fluently into each other, 
Jlash the whole in all its successive divisions of beauty 
upon the mind. Thus, for a single example, the whole 
German school of poetry and metaphysical sublimity and 
subtlety, reading " the riddle of the Universe," he daguer- 
reotyped to an attentive mind in ten comj^-act sentences. 
And, speaking generally, we will say, we never before heard 
such worlds of reading " touched off" in such a grand con- 
flagration — a conflagration in which so many structures 
were clearly outlined, and all together made such a 
rhetorical blaze. 



MR. CHOATE VS. NEW YORK TRIBUNE. 

In 1857, Mr. Choate delivered a lecture before the 
Boston Mercantile Library Association, on " Revolution- 
ary Eloquence." It was in matter by far the most bril- 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 495 

liant platform Address I ever heard from him. His heart 
was in it ; for Cicero, his favorite theme, was a chief sub- 
ject of its jjanegyric. 

A few days after its delivery, the Neiv-Yorh Tribune 
attacked its positions, and denied the correctness of its 
reasoning, especially in regard to Cicero. 

Mr. Choate took the matter up, exactly as if a warm 
personal friend of his own had been assailed. He asked 
me to reply to the New York writer in one of our Boston 
papers. I did so, writing two or three articles ; which 
elicited another from the same source, reaffirming the hos- 
tile argument. Much of the thought, and the main line 
of argumentation in these articles, it is not inappropriate 
now to say, were furnished me hy him. They are to be 
found, by any one who should feel disposed to see Mr. 
Choate's defense of Cicero, in successive numbers of the 
Boston Traveller, of March, 1857. 

The language and arrangement only, were not his ; 
most of the thinking was. They were published as edito- 
rial matter, and I regret not having room to insert them here. 
It was very interesting to observe, while this subject 
was in discussion, how absorbed Mr. Choate was in it. 
He sent for me nearly every morning with some new idea 
or suggestion to be presented, and rummaged over half his 
library for facts confirmatory of his views. He spoke of 
Cicero with the same sort of personal fondness as he would 
have spoken of Webster, had he been preparing to defend 
him from disparagement. 



KOSSUTH S ELOQUENCE. 

Mr. Choate was powerfully impressed with the power 
and fascination of the oratory of the Magyar. His descrip- 



49G llEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

tion of that eloquence was solemn with all the mystical sub- 
limity of the lands of the Orient. He says : " Once again, 
since the Prophet foretold the destruction of the people and 
the coming in of the Assyrian, in tones every note of the 
strain sadder than before, we have listened to an eloquence 
— the sweetest the most mighty, the most mournful that 
man can ever utter or can ever hear — the Eloquence of an 
expiring Nation ! How, after this, can we be quite sure, 
that the harp of Orpheus did not awahe inanimate nature 
to a transient discourse of reason, and did not for one mo- 
ment call back Eurydice, from the lower to the upper and 
the sweeter air ?" 



I remember a case in which he had occasion to depreci- 
ate the testimony of a witness, as colored essentially by his 
feelings. " This man's memory is playing with him," he 
said. " He thinlvs he is remembering; when he is only an- 
swering according to his passionate feelings. His memory, 
spell-bound by his feeling, summons to his too ready tongue 
successive incidents. Like the strange Woman of Endor, it 
stands before the eyes of his eager imagination, and seems 
to say to him, — What will you have now ? What narra- 
tive ? what picture ? what phraseology ? what ghost or 
spirit or thought shall I call up to memory ?" 



In a railroad case, where a wagon was run down, Mr. 
Choate said : " There was no forward motion. The horse 
^ioodi stock still ; still as marhle ; a stone statue." This 
was a simple description, but I shall never forget the tre- 
mendous emphasis, with which he uttered these few words. 
His face was deadly pale ; and the utterance smote the ear 
like a succession of sharp claps of thunder. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 497 

DESCRIPTION OF HIS POLITICAL SPEECHES. 

His opening words in political speeches were often very 
cfFective. 

I remember one in Fanenil Hall, when the old Cradle 
of Liberty was roclcing with its thronging crowds. As the 
deafening cheers which greeted him subsided, the people 
heard his voice pealing out, " Once more unto the breach, 
dear friends, once more \" 

And again, under similar circumstances, he commenced : 
" I am sick, fellow-citizens ; unable to stand here, unable 
to he here ; but I could not have lain still upon my bed 
if I had not risen at your summons, to come down here, 
and at least say — Amen, when you said, ' God bless Gen- 
eral Zachary Taylor.'" 

I think it was in the same Speech that he drew a most 
vivid picture of the huge audience before him, — " the beauty 
and the bravery of Boston, the solid men and the active 
men, business, commerce, wealth, thought, all represented ; 
and, before me now, rising rank on rank to the skies." 

The most brilliant political speeches I ever heard, were 
those which Mr. Choate made in the campaign which re- 
sulted in electing General Taylor to the Presidency. For 
the reason stated in the Preface, I do not insert any of 
them here ; but there was a single passage in one of them, 
of signal beauty and originality, which is worthy a sepa- 
rate preservation. 

The ladies of Salem gave a Union banner to the Whig 
club of Salem, old Essex county, Mr. Choate's birth-place. 
He stood up to make the presentation speech ; he sjjoke 
words of rare felicity. 

"I give you, from the ladies of this Salem — the holy 



498 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

and beautiful city of Peace — a Banner of Peace ! Peace 
has lier victories, however, as well as war. I give you 
then, I hope and believe, the Banner of a victory of Peace. 
The work of hands — some of which you doubtless have 
given away in marriage at the altar — the work of hands 
for which many altars might contend ! some of which 
have woven the more immortal web of thought and 
recorded speech, making the mind of Salem as renowned 
as its beauty — the work of such hands — embodying their 
general and warm appreciation of your exertions, and their 
joy in your prospects ; conveying at once the assurance of 
triumph and the consolations of possible defeat — expressive 
above all of their pure and considered moral judgments on 
the great cause and the Good Man ! — the moral judgments 
of these, whose frown can disappoint the proudest aim, 
whose approbation prosper not less than ours — the work of 
such hands, the gift of such hearts — the record of such 
moral sentiments — the symbol of so many sensibilities and 
so many hopes — you w^ill prize it more than if woven of 
the tints of a summer evening sunset, inscribed and 
wrought and brought down to earth by viewless artists 
of the skies. 

We go for the Union to the last beat of the pulse, and 
the last drop of blood. We know and feel that there — 
there— in that endeared name— beneath that charmed Flag — 
among those old glorious graves — in that ample and that 
secure renown, that there loe have garnered up our hearts 
— tltere we must either live or hear no life. With our 
sisters of the Kepublic, less or more, we would live, and 
we would die — " one hope, one lot, one life, one glory." 

Take then, from their hands, this symbol of so many 
hopes, and so much good ; and remember that on you, and 
such as y<>u, it rests to disap])oint or consummate them ;i,l]. 



KEMINISCENCES OF EUFUS CHOATE. 499 

WHAT WAS SAID OF MR. CHOATE THIRTY YEARS AGO. 

It is very interesting to observe in the hour of a very great 
man's cuhiiination, what men said about him, in the suc- 
cessive stages of his developement. I met, in a newspaper, 
the following description of " Young Kufus Choate," as he 
seemed to a practiced observer, when he first went to Congress. 

In 1833, Honorable James Broohs, now of the New 
York Express, wrote from Washington to the Portland 
Advertiser, of which ])aper he was then editor, the an- 
nexed notice of Mr. Choate. It was quite different in tone 
from the present manner of speaking of liim : 

" Mr. Kufus Choate is a most promising young man 
from Essex District, who does not s})eak often, but who 
speaks much t(_) the purpose. Few men in Congress com- 
mand more attention. He has a well-disciplined, but, 
perhaps, not a brilliant, mind ; or if brilliant, he has not 
suffered himself to strike out many oratorical sparks in the 
debates in Avhich he has participated. He argues closely, 
clearly, and of course forcibly. He came into Congress with 
a high reputation preceding him ; not always the most for- 
tunate recommendation, for it makes critics more critical, 
and the public more greedy — and has thus far sustained 
the expectations of the pubhc, and increased his own repu- 
tation. There is an apparent frankness, a sincerity, and 
sober earnestness in his manner, when he addresses the 
House, which is admirably calculated to make an impres- 
sion, and which does always have an effect. Mr. Choate 
returns from the House this session, to pursue his profession 
of law, it is said, where there is but little doubt that he 
must soon be in the head and front rank at the Bar. Massa- 
chusetts will lose much in losing liim ii\n\\ Congress — for 
th." l)iiger he was there, the stronger he would become." 



500 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 



HIS OPINION OF HENRY CLAY. 

Mr. Choate always admired Henry Clay, both before 
and after their personal altercation in the Senate. He was 
himself a man too magnanimous and mighty to find his 
estimate of rival greatness colored by personal spleen. 
How he spoke of Clay, after their contest, many remarks 
in the foregoing Conversations show ; how he spoke of 
Clay, before their contest, the following extract from a 
letter, written by him January 15th, 1832, shows ; Mr. 
Clay had just made his opening speech on the TarilT. 
In his own j^eculiar chirography, and in a few compact 
phrases, Mr. Choate describes it, tlius : 

" I heard liim (Mr. Clay) deliver it — his manner was 
studiously cool, conciliatory, winning and grave — not rhe- 
torical, nor vehement — unlike the ' Henry Clay' of fomier 
days — but better than that — sound, clear, comprehensive, 
paternal, statesmanlike." 

HIS BENEVOLENCE. 

Mr. Choate was a very benevolent and kind-hearted 
man ; no suiferer, no student, no charity was ever turned 
away empty from the doors of his large and overflowing 
heart. I have known him defend cases for poor and 
friendless women for nothing, or next to nothing, when 
in the same time he might have been making his fifty or a 
hundred or more dollars a day. Quite recently, when the 
Koman Catholic Association procured his services as a lec- 
turer, he filled their house and their coffers ; but learning 
that their course of lectures was for the benefit of destitute 
boys — he gave his glittering address a free gift to them, 
and would take no fee. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 501 
HIS ECONOMY OF TIME. 

His linsbanclry and economy of liis time was most 
minute and punctual. For many of his studies and 
exercises, he often could only get five minutes a day ; 
yet that five minutes was a])i)ropriated and employed 
with as much severity of application as if it had been 
five hours. 

HIS HOME MEMORIES. 

Once when he was away from home, trying a heavy 
case, during tlie time I knew him, he was taken very sick. 
A nurse was employed. As the fevered patient lay tossing 
on his bed, during the long watches of the weary night, 
he suddenly stopped his uneasy motions, and thanked the 
nurse for her assiduous care ; " But," said he, " I want 
you to take your sewing, and sit so by the bed-side ; for 
that's the toay I remember my mother tcsed to sit." 

THE MUSIC OF THE UNION. 

I have been told by a Californian that Choate's politi- 
cal Letter with the famous phrase, " We carry the flag and 
keep step to the music of the Union," and the phrase itself, 
contributed more than any other one thing to secure the 
electoral vote of Califoruia to Mr. Buchanan. One half of 
the emigration from the old States being from New En- 
gland alone, where Choate was well known, and he being 
an old-line Whig, they followed his counsel. His Letter 
Avas sent broad-cast to every gulch, caiion, and mining 
town in California. 



502 KEMINISGENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 



CRITICISMS UPON MR. CHOATE. 

I liave heard it suggested tliat this great orator-advo- 
cate had a vicious habit of memoriter speaking. But this 
is not true ; he wrote the greater part of his sj^eechcs 
and arguments, but he never hxboriously learned what he 
wrote. He wrote, to fix and make certain his own thought. 
Having written, it woukl not much have troubled him to 
find his wi'iting burned up. 

I have seen him, in the discussion of an interlocutory 
point, write up to the very instant of rising to reply ; and 
then make an oratorio argument, every word of which 
seemed exact and elaborate, yet he had had no chance to 
commit any thing to memory. 

Again, it has been said that he never, like Webster, 
rested his case on its single great points, but argued every 
point, big or little, bearing on the issue. 

But he Txnew the great jjoints, where they were, and 
what thev were. He could rest on them. I have heard 
him do up in an hour the case of a month. I have heard 
him in a great patent case, after his adversary had argued 
four days, say, " I lay out of the case three days of this 
argument as immaterial ;" and then proceed to discuss 
onhj the narrower issue. 

In a Railroad collision case, when his adversary quoted 
law and principle foi- hours, I have known him take one 
decision, abandon all else, and say so — then concentrate 
all his energies on that ; and resting on that, ravaye his 
enemy's argument with desolating energy. But, he said in 
private, I have been so often disappointed in the sudden 
turn which jurors' minds take, I have jjroved them false on 
such trivial points, that, as I grow older, I argue every 
point, even at the risk of tedium. 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 503 

If it be said that Webster always rested on a few broad 
propositions ; it must be remembered that Webster did not 
so (.)ften argue hard cases. 

Some, noticing his careless attire, have thought him 
slovenly in dress ; but he w\as only cai-eless, never slovenly ; 
his clothes were never dirty, nor snuffy ; not ill made, but 
made of the best material, costly and often renewed. He 
was careless, as a greatly occupied mind would be ; as Bona- 
parte would be. His ideal was neat and tidy. He took 
care of minutia. His linen was always clean, even his 
nails, that sure mark of a gentleman, were daily attended 
to. His boots looked clumsy, but his feet were very kai-ge ; 
and his great heats of body and blood in speaking, com- 
pelled him to wear over them an India rubber cover, which 
made them even clumsier. 

He Avcnt to his office always tlirough narrow lanes, 
straight as the crow flies, he went ; but it was to escape 
interruption, and to avoid obstruction he shunned thorough- 
fares. 

While it is conceded that Mr. Choate was unrivaled as 
an advocate, and in all those accomplishments and acqui- 
sitions which are necessary for the successful management 
of a cause ; there have been attempts to criticise his style 
of argument and mode of managing a case. To me it al- 
ways seemed that, in his style of procedure, he was beyond 
and above description or criticism. He had no i3rototy])e : 
and any imitation would be only a travestie. He was his 
own original ; and when you say that his oratory was loo 
impassioned and too studied, "with too little of the simple, 
colloquial talk to the jury," you are only repeating a iru- 
ism, and savinc; that all this was Choate. Whether his 
addresses to the jury were simjde or studied, the panel un- 
derstood them ; and the iradmiration was shared by Court, 



504 KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

Bar, and spectators. One great peculiarity of tliis man's 
oratory was, that he equally aifected the plain twelve men 
of the Jury — the learned Bench — old gray-haired attorneys 
— elegant scholars — cold and passionless officials — inge- 
nuous students of Law — grave divines — and that motley 
collection of listeners in the gallery and outside of ttie 
bar, who may be considered to constitute the people. 

In an asje of Law Eeform, it has been said he took no 
part in its reformation. He did take a part. It was the 
part of wisdom. In the Massachusetts Constitutional 
Convention he opposed with great power and effect the 
making of Judges, elective. He argued this in private and 
in public ; he told the hostile body that if they would 
only spare the judges, he would be silent under all else they 
might do. He reasoned, implored, oratorized on this ; the 
integrity and the impartiality of the Judicial magistrate ; 
and he, more than any other one man, contributed to pre- 
vent the insertion of this elective provision into the new 
Constitution, and to educate the public mind of Massa- 
chusetts uj)on this great and vital subject. 

THE LIKENESS OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

When the photograph Portrait from which the en- 
graving in this volume is taken, first appeared, the fol- 
lowing criticism upon Choate and it, was published in a 
New York newspaper. It adds two or three verbal de- 
scriptive touches to the lines of the portrait, as we see it 
before us, in the engraving. 

Physically, Mr. Choate is lank, hollow-visaged and un- 
gainly ; but there is that, nevertheless, in his face which re- 
ports a vigorous and brilliant intellect. Most artists would 
be tempted to smooth over his physical defects, but the sun 
is impartial, and we have in this picture the man exactly as 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 505 

he is. The full fi2;ure is seen, seated in an arm-chair, with 
his right arm resting on a table, admirably expressing in its 
whole jjosition — in the loose hang of the hands and the set 
of the garments, entire lassitude and physical dejection; thi^ 
coat is fastened negligently by a single button, the standing 
collar is flarino: and wilted, and the cravat meets in an in- 
describable knot that looks like the fortuitous conjunction 
of original atoms. The almost coffee-colored face is deeply 
marked ; but in this, Avith its luminous eyes and the back- 
ground of wild and fantastic hair, is found the physical 
expression of Choate's fascinating power. 

As long as men are inspired and raised to higher levels 
of motive and of action, by noble thoughts, by kindling 
and liberal sentiments, by the spectacle of a splendid 
accomplishment and unfaltering toil, — so long will this 
man's life tend to lift them into a region of impulse far 
above the low and poor springs of motive which too often 
rule mankind. 

He is gone ; and to those who saw him daily, the world 
loses some of its sunlight. Never more shall we see that 
rich smile glittering across those somber features ; those 
deep eyes, shining with all the romance of their sentiment, 
as the majesty of intellect lifts and widens that furrowed 
brow ; never more behold that strong form dilating with 
the shock of his nervous energy ; and never more sliall we 
hear that strange Eloquence, in whose words, always poetic 
and often scriptural, the passion of the Italian and the fer- 
vor of the Hebrew muse combined to take captive the 
imagination and the impulse of men. 

Like William Pinkney, this most rare genius will soon 
be but a splendid tradition ; for those who only read his 
Speeches will never know, or even conjecture, how he 
uttered them. 



CHAPTER X . 

FANEUIL HALL IN MOURNING FOR HIM, AND EDWARD 
EVERETT'S EULOGY. 

On the twenty-third day of July, 1859, Faneuil Hall 
was thrown open at mid-day, that the citizens of Boston 
might assemble t(.) think over and mourn the death of Rufus 
Choate. 

To give due effect to the solemn occasion, the great 
Hall was appropriately arrayed in habiliments of mourn- 
ing. The light of day was excluded, to yield additional 
eifect to the somber colors. From the center of the ceiling 
to the capitals of the pillars, and along the fronts of the 
galleries, winding up the tall columns, covering the rostrum 
and the gilded work and frames behind it, were festoons 
and draperies of black alpacca and white bunting mixed 
and interrangcd. From the back of the eagle in the fi'ont 
gallery, lines of crapo descended and festooned the front of" 
the galleries. The Rostrum was covered with crape, and 
l»lack and white crape was appropriately disposed in the 
rear. On the south side of the rostrum was a portrait of 
Choate, painted by Ames. The Hall was lighted with gas, 
and the whole arrangement was most effective and ajjpro- 
priate. 

Addresses were made by several gentlemen ; Mr. Ever- 
ett's address closed the meeting. It was uttered with 
tones of heartfelt sorrow, and gave full expression to the 
feeling of the citizens. During its delivery,, a solemn 



n E M 1 N I S C E N C E S OF R U F U S C H O A T E . 507 

silence and stillness prevailed. The audience seemed re- 
luctant to applaud, lest it should break harshly upon their 
expressions of grief. At one passage, however, — that de- 
scribing tlie sounding of the imperial clarion — the people 
were unable to maintain their silence ; the noble energy 
of its delivery so revived all their recollections of the 
dashing vehemence of Mr. Choate himself. 

The Address is here printed. It was kindly revised for 
the author by Mr. Everett himself 

ADDRESS OF MR. EVERETT, REVISED BY HIMSELF. 

3Ir. 3Iayor and Fellow Citizens : I obey the only call 
which could witli propriety have drawn me at this time 
from my retirement, in accepting your invitation to unite 
with you in the melancholy duties which we are assembled 
to perform. While I speak, sir, the lifeless remains of our 
dear departed friend are expected — it may be have already 
returned to his bereaved home. We sent him forth, but a 
few days since, in search of health ; the exquisite bodily 
organization overtasked and shattered, but the master in- 
tellect still shining in unclouded strength. Anxious, but 
not desponding, we sent him forth, hoping that the brac- 
ing air of the ocean which he greatly loved, the respite 
from labor, the change of scene, the cheerful intercourse, 
which he was so wxdl calculated to enjoy with congenial 
spirits abroad, would return him to us refreshed and reno- 
vated ; but he has come back to us dust and ashes, a i)il- 
grim already on his way to 

" The undiscovered country from whoso bourne 
No traveler returns." 

How could I refuse to bear my humble part in the trib- 
ute of respect which you are assembled to pay to the mem- 



508 KEMINISCENCES OF IIUFUS CHOATE, 

ory of siicli a man ; a man not only honored by me in 
common with the whole country, but tenderly cherished as 
a faithful friend, from the morning of his days, and almost 
from the morning of mine ; one with whom through life I 
was delighted to take sweet counsel — for whom I felt an 
affection never chilled for a moment, duiing nearly forty 
years since it sprung up. I knew our dear friend, sir, from 
the time he entered the Law School at Cambridge. I was 
associated with him as one of the Massachusetts delegation 
in the House of Representatives of the United States, be- 
tween whom and myself there was an entire community of 
feeling and opinion on all questions of men and measures, 
and with whom, in these later years, as his near neighbor, 
and especially when illness confined him at home, I have 
enjoyed opportunities of the most intimate social inter- 
course. Now that he is gone, sir, I feel that one more is 
taken away of those most trusted and loved, and with 
whom I ha<l most hoj^ed to finish the journey ; nay, sir, 
one whom, in the course of nature, I should have preceded 
to its end, and who would have performed for me the last 
kindly oflice, which I, with drooi^ing spirit, would fiiin per- 
form for him. 

But although with a willing heart I undertake the 
duty you have devolved upon me, I can not but feel how 
little remains to be said. It is but echoing the voice which 
has been heard from every part of the country — from the 
Bar, from the Press, from every association from which 
it could with propriety be uttered — to say that he stood 
at the head of his profession in this country. If, in his own 
or in any other part of the Union, there was his superior 
in any branch of legal knowledge, there was certainly no 
one who united, to the same extent, profound learning in 
the law with a ran^'c almost boundless of miscellaneous 



o 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 509 

reading, reasoning powers of the liighest order, intuitive 
quickness of perception, a wariness and circumspection 
never taken by surprise, and an imagination which rose on 
a bold and easy wing to the highest heaven of invention. 
These powei-s, trained by dihgent cultivation— these at- 
tainments, combined and applied with sound judgment 
consummate skill, and exquisite taste, necessarily placed 
him at the head of the profession of his choice, where, since 
the death of Mr. Webster, he shone without a rival. With 
such endowments formed at the best schools of professional 
education, exercised with unwearied assiduity, through a 
long j)rofessional life, under the spur of generous ambition, 
and the heavy responsibility of an ever-growing reputation 
to be sustained, — if possible to be raised,— he could fill no 
second place. 

But he did not, like most eminent jurists, content him- 
self with the learning and the fame of his profession. Pie 
was more than most men in any profession, in the best 
sense of the word, a man of letters. He kept up his aca- 
demical studies in after life. He did not think it the part 
either of wisdom or good taste to leave behind him at 
school, or at college, the noble languages of the great i)eo- 
ples of antiquity ; but he continued througli life to read 
the Greek and Roman classics. He was also familiar with 
the whole range of English literature ; and he had a re- 
spectable acquaintance with the standard French authors. 
This wide and varied circle of reading not only gave a lib- 
eral expansion to his mind, in all directions, but it endowed 
him with a great wealth of choice but unstudied language, 
and enabled him to command a richness of illustration — 
whatever subject he had in hand — beyond most of our 
public speakers and writers. This taste for reading was 
formed in early life. 



510 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

While lie was at the Law School at Cambridge, I was 
accustomed to meet him more frequently than any -other 
person of his standing, in the alcoves of the library of the 
University. As he advanced in years and acquired the 
means of gratifying his taste in this respect, he formed a 
miscellaneous collection, probably as valuable as any other 
in Boston ; and he was accustomed playfully to say tliat 
every Saturday afternoon, after the labor of the week, he 
indulged himself in buying and bringing home a new book. 
Thus reading with a keen relish, as a relaxation from pro- 
fessional toil, and with a memory that nothing worth 
retaining escaj^ed, he became a living store-house of polite 
literature, out of which, with rare facility and grace, he 
brought forth treasures new and old, not deeming these 
last the least precious. 

Though living mainly for his profession, Mr. Choate 
engaged to some extent in public life, and that at an early 
age, as a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and 
of the national House of Representatives, and in riper 
years as a Senator of the United States, as the successor 
of Mr. Webster, whose entire confidence he enjoyed, and 
whose place he, if any one, was not unworthy to fill. In 
these different positions he displayed consummate ability. 
His appearance, his silent demeanor in either Plouse of 
Congress commanded respect. He was one of the few 
whose very presence in a public assembly is a call to order. 
In the daily routine of legislation he did not take an active 
part. He rather shunned clerical work, and consequently 
avoided, as much as duty permitted, the labor of the com- 
mittee room ; but on every gi'eat question that came up 
while he was a member of either House of Congress, he 
made a great speech ; and when he had spoken there was 
very little left for any one else to say on the same side of 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 511 

the question. I remember, on one occasion, after he had 
been defending, on broad national grounds, the pohcy of 
aftbrding a moderate Protection to our native industry, 
showing that it Avas not merely a Ljcal but a national 
interest, and seeking to establish this point by a great 
variety of illustrations, equally novel and ingenious, a 
Western member, who had hitherto wholly dissented from 
this view of the subject, exclaimed that he " was the most 
persuasive speaker he had eA^er heard," 

But tliougli abundantly able to have filled a prominent 
place among the distinguished active statesmen of the day, 
he had little fondness for political life, and no aptitude 
whatever for the out-doors management ; for the election- 
eering legerdemain ; for the wearisome correspondence with 
local great men ; and the heart-breaking drudgery of frank- 
ing cart-loads of speeches and public documents to the four 
winds, which are necess-ary at the present day to great suc- 
cess in apolitical career. Still less adroit was he in turning 
to some personal advantage whatever topic liap}iens for the 
moment to attract public attention ; fishing with evci- 
freshly baitetl hook in the turbid waters of an ephemeral 
popularity. In reference to some of the arts, by whi^'h 
political advancement is sought and obtained, he once said 
to mo, with that well-known characteristic look, in whlc]i 
sadness and compassionate pleasantry were about equally 
mingled " They did not do such tilings in Washington's days." 

If ever there was a truly disinterested patriot, Kufus 
Choate was that man. In his political career there was no 
shade of selfishness. Had he been willing to purchase 
advancement at the price often paid for it, there never Avas 
a moment, from the time he first made himself felt ami 
known, that he could not have commanded any thing 
Avhich any party could bestow. But he desired non6 of 



512 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

the rewards or honors of success. On the contrary he, not 
only for his individnal self, regarded office as a burden — 
an obstacle in the way of the cultivation of his professional 
and literary tastes— but he held that of necessity, and in con- 
sequence of the strong tendency of our parties to assume a 
sectional character, conservative opinions, seeking to mod- 
erate between the extremes which agitate the country, must 
of necessity be in the minority ; that it was the " mission' 
of men who hold such opinions, not to fill honorable and 
lucrative posts which are unavoidably monopolized by 
active leaders, but to speak prudent words on great occa- 
sions, which command the respect, if they do not enlist the 
symi)athies, of both the conflicting parties, and thus insen- 
sibly influence the public mind. He comprehended and 
accepted the position ; he knew that it was one liable to 
be misunderstood, and sure to be ujisrepresented at the 
time ; but not less sure to be justified when the interests 
and passions of the day are buried, as they are now for 
him, beneath the clods of the valley. 

• But this ostracism, to which his conservative opinions 
condemned him, produced not a shade of bitterness in his 
feelings. His patriotism was as cheerful as it was intense. 
He regarded our confederated republic, with its wonderful 
adjustment of State and Federal organization ; — the States 
bearing the burden and descending to the details of local 
administration, the Ueneral Government moulding the 
whole into one grand nationality, and representing it in 
the family of nations, — as the most wonderful phenome- 
non in the political history of the world. Too much of a 
statesman to join the unreflecting disparagement, with 
which other great forms of national polity are spoken of in 
this country, he yet considered the oldest, the wisest, and 
the most successful of them, tlie British Constitution, as a 



REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CIIOATE. i)l'A 

far less wonderful political system than onr confederated 
republic. 

The territorial extent of the country ; the beautiful 
play into each other of its great conuuercial, agricultural, 
and manufacturing interests ; the material prosperity, the 
advancements in arts, and letters, and manners already 
made ; the capacity for further indetinile progress in this 
vast theater of action, in which Providence has placed the 
Anglo-American race, stretching from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, from the Arctic Circle to the Tropics, were themes 
on which he dwelt as none but he could dwell ; and lie be- 
lieved that with patience, with mutual forbearance, with a 
willingness to think that our brethren, however widely we 
may differ from them, may be as honest and patriotic as 
ourselves, our common Country would eventually reach a 
height of f)rosperity of which the world as yet has seen no 
example. 

With such gifts, such attainments, and such a spirit, 
he placed himself, as a matter of course, not merely at the 
head of the Jurists and Advocates, but of the public Speak- 
ers of the country. After listening to him at the Bar, in 
the Senate, or upon the academic and popular platform, 
you felt that you had heard the best that could be heard 
in either place. That mastery which he had displayed at 
the forum and in the deliberative assembly was not less 
conspicuous in every other form of public address. As 
happens in most cases of eminent jurists and statesmen, 
possessing a brilliant imagination and able to adorn a se- 
vere course of reasoning with the charms of a glowing fancy 
and a sparkling style, it was sometimes said of him, as it 
was said before him of Burke and Erskine, of Ames and 
Pinkney — that he was more of a rhetorician than a lo- 
gician, that he dealt in words and figures of speech more 

22* 



514 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

than in facts or arguments. These are the invidious com- 
ments, by which dull or prejudiced men seek to disparage 
those gifts which are furthest from their own reach. 

It is perhaps by his discourses on academical and popu- 
lar occasions that he is most extensively known in the 
community, as it is these which were listened to with de- 
lighted admiration by the largest audiences. He loved to 
treat a purely literary theme ; and he knew how to throw 
a magic freshness — ^like the cool mornino; dew on a cluster 
of purple grapes — over the most familiar tojiics at a patri- 
otic celebration. Some of these occasional performances 
will ever be held amon«: the briirhtest o'ems of our litera- 
ture. The eulogy on Daniel Webster at Dartmouth Col- 
lege, in which he mingled at once all the light of his genius 
and all the warmth of his heart, has, within my knowledge, 
never been equaled among the performances of its class in 
this country for sym^iathetic appreciation of a great man, 
discriminating analysis of character, fertility of illustration, 
weight of sentiment, and a style at once chaste, nervous, 
and brilliant. The long sentences which have been criti- 
cised in this, as in his other performances, are like those 
which Dr. Channing admired and commended in Milton's 
prose — well compacted, full of meaning, fit vehicles of 
great thoughts. 

But he does not deal exclusively in those jionderous 
sentences. There is nothing of the artificial Johnsonian 
balance in his style. It is as often marked by a pregnant 
brevity as by a sonorous amplitude. He is sometimes sat- 
isfied, in concise epigrammatic clauses, to skirmish with 
his light troops and drive in the enemy's outposts. It is 
only on fitting occasions, when great principles are to be 
vindicated and solemn truths told ; when some moral or 
])..]itical Waterloo or Solferino is to be fought, that he 



IIEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 515 

puts on the entire panoply of his gorgeous rhetoric. It is 
then that his majestic sentences swell to the dimensions of 
his thought ; that you hear afar off the awful roar of his 
rifled ordnance ; and when he has stormed the heights and 
broken the center, and trampled the squares, and turned 
the staggering wings of the adversary, that he sounds his 
imperial clarion along the whole line of battle and moves 
forward with all his hosts in one overwhelmino- charge. 

Our friend was, in all the personal relations of life, the 
most unselfish and disinterested of men. Commandino; 
from an early period a valuable clientage, and rising rap- 
idly to the summit of his profession, and to the best prac- 
tice in the Courts of Massachusetts and in the Supreme 
Court of the United States, with no expensive tastes or 
habits, and a manner of life wholly unostentatious and 
simple, advancing years overtook him with but slender 
provision for their decline. He reaped little but fame 
where he ought to have reaped both fame and fortune. A 
career which in England would have been crowned with 
affluence, and probably with distinguished rank and office, 
found him at sixty chained to the treadmill of laborious 
practice. 

He might, indeed, be regarded as a martyr to his pro- 
fession. He gave to it his time, his strength, and neglect- 
ing due care of regular bodily exercise and occasional en- 
tire relaxation, he might be said to have given to it his life. 
He assumed the racking anxieties and feverish excitements 
of his clients. From the Courts, where he argued the 
causes entrusted to him with all the energy of his intellect, 
rousing into corresponding action an overtasked nervous 
system, these cares and anxieties followed him to the wea- 
riness of his midnight vigils, and the unrest of his sleepless 
])illow. In this way he led a long professional career, worn 



516 REMINISCENCES OF RUFUS CHOATE. 

and harassed with other men's cares, and sacrificed ten 
added years of active usefuhiess to the intensity with which 
he threw himself into the discharge of his duties in middle 
life. 

There are other recollections of our friend's career — 
other j)hases of his character on which I would gladly 
dwell ; hut the hour has elapsed and it is not necessary. 
The gentlemen who have preceded me, his professional 
brethren, his pastor, the press of the country, generously 
allowing past ditferences of ojnnion to he buried in his 
grave, have more than made up for any deficiency in my 
remarks. His work is done ; nobly, worthily done. Never 
more in the temples of justice — never more in the Senate 
Chamber — never more in the crowded assembly — never 
more in this consecrated Hall, where he so often held hs- 
tening crowds in rapt admiration, shall we catch the un- 
earthlv glance of his eve or listen to the strangle sweet 
music of his voice. To-morrow we shall follow him — the 
pure patriot, the consummate jurist, the eloquent orator, 
the honored citizen, the beloved friend — to the last resting 
place ; and who will not feel, as we lay him there, that a 
brio;hter srenius and a warmer heart are not left amono- liv- 
ing men ! 



INDEX. 



AiiiNom, Lord, 174, 330. 

AclIII.LKS, 61. 
Adams, Jons, 456. 

Au.vMS, JouN- QuiNCY, Lectures, 133. 
Strength, 247. 
Ai)\Ms, IJev. Dr., 75. 
Akams, Sam., -.'6^. 
.■Es.;iiis-i:s, n, '-'81. 
A<;a.mi;.mn()n, (U. 
auincoitbt, -23-1. 
ALi:XANi)i;B TiiR Great, 92, 20X 
Al.KXAXDStA, 4it>. 
Ai.LR>f, Woo Ibui-y vs., 440. 
Am.stox, W., y05. 
AMiis, FisuEK, Kiilogj- on Hamilton, 53. 

Oratory, 2S5. 
Andover, case at, 103. 
AxE0i>0TE8. book-keeping, 94. 
takinif a fee, 95. 
Choute ill an old-book store,100. 
answers to clients, 114. 
Webster and Choate, 141, 324, 

341). 
rebuke of incivility, 149. 
repartee of wituess, 155. 
stopping in court, KiS. 
grain vessel, 16S. 
classic wealth of (Jhoate, 183. 
the Uliief Justice, -Oi. 
" miscellaneous" person, 203. 
" shirti;igs," 204. 
hull at Lowell, 313. 
Clay and Siory, 254. 
KautonI and Ghoate, 415 
Akatiella, The, 140. 
AaiSTOTLE, 123. 
AsuuL'HTON-, Lord. 41!. 
AsiiTo.v, Capt., 115. 
Atiiexs, :i35. 
Aduosx, Mount, 14 

AUSTEKLITZ, 22. 



B. 

Bacon, 14, 124, 241. 

Baltimosk, Convention of 1852, 65, 259. 

Banchoft, Gko., 2^1. 

BANiis, X. P., estimate of Choate, 183. 

Batcueldku, death of. 47.3. 

Bvyne, PETr.2, 101, 301. 

Belt., AisiuArL, 2ilJ. 

Bell, Dr., 390. 

Bell, John, 28o. 



Bell, Mr.. 86. 
Bentox, Tuos. H., 184. 

Choate.' s estimate of, 297. 

opinion of Pinkney, 346. 
BiCKFOun, Mrs., 219. 
BiNi;iiAM, II iward vs., 4S3. 
Bin.vey, IloaACE, 2«).5. 
BLArKSTONE Kailkoad, 475. 
BLATlUKOUn, 15.>. 

Blennkshasset, 72. 
Blucher, 235. 
Bolingueoke, Lord, 14. 

works, 99. 

elocution, 124. 

stvle, 23 '. 

head, 2.53. 

intellect, 288. 
Booth, Enwix. 44, 208. 
BoMTir, J. B , 187, 4^6. 
Boston, Ohoate removes to, 49. 
South, 3(19. 
East, 373. 

BOSWELL, 111. 

Bo\vi>oiN Squabe, 231. 
BSACKETT, liust of Choate, 88. 
BaiSTOL, 418. 
BnooKs, James, 499. 
Baooi;s, P. S., -92. 
BsonGU.\^j, 17. 

Choate' s opinion of, 101, 239. 
doctrine of a lawyer's duty, 

133. 
temjjer, 254 
science, 258. 
Brown, James, lasi.-i t'.-.-., 463. 

letter, 470. 
Bbyant, Wm. C, rc^.Mublancj of head, 
s;i. 
.■43 a poet, eSO, 493. 
Buchanan, J., Choate's reply to, 50. 

supported by Choate, 76. 
speech for at, Lowell, 2,3. 
voted for, by Choate, 292. 
Bncn.\NAN, the missionary, 250. 
Bukna Vista, 63. 
Bullock, Col., 475. 
BuLWEK, Sir Henry, 23S, 274. 
Bulweh, Sir Edward, 288. 
Bni'.GERs, Tristram, 243. 

BURLINUAME, lOii. 

Burniiam's book-store, 99. 
Burns, ANTiroxy, 472. 
BuRiiE, Kd.mu.vd, 70, 232,243. 

traduced, 317. 

Gibbon compared with, 494. 
Byeon, 204, 339. 



518 



INDEX, 



c. 

C-F.8\E, JruiTS, 64, 234, 256. 

Caliiodn, J. C, 245, 441. . 

Califoenia, 5iII. 

Calkins, Dr., 4S0. 

Camijeidgk, 5rtS. 

CvjauEN, Lord, opinion of witness to a will, 

HS8. 
Campisell, Lives of Chancellors, 300. 

CaNXIXc;, CrF,OIl(iE, 3116. 

Cannisc, Sir STSATi'-oan, 238. 

Caklyle, Thos., 492. 

Carthage, :)0.'1, 426. 

Cakteb, James O., 394. 

Cavekny, >Ir., 436. 

CiiAXDLEE, p. W., opinion of Choate, 12:), 

135. 
ClIANNING, Wm. E., 514. 

ClIAHLEMAOr^E, 234 

CiiAKLES II , King, 303. 

ClIAELES, St., 219._ 
ClIASLF.STOWN, 436. 

CuATUAM, voice, ISS. 

studies, 251. 

power, 271, 322. 

Grattan describes, 34G. 
CnEiiAcco, 40, 455. 

ClIESArEAKE, 234. 

CiiF.STr.uFii-.Li), 252, 321. 

Chicago, 422. ,. . . • lo 

CiiOATE, 11UF08, Standing in America, !.->. 

of national repute as a law- 
yer, 14. 

personal appearance, 10. 

author's acquaintance with, 
20. 

mental characteristics, 21. 

conversation, 22. 

languapje, 24. 

birth, 2 ». 

enters college, 30. 

graduation, 30. 

admitted to the bar, 32. 

goes to Legisl iture, 32. 

to Congress, 32. 

early professional life, 34. 

rem: ives to Salem, 30. 

" the conjurer," 41. 

attendance at church, 45. 

personal appearance, 4S. 

removes to Boston, 49. 

chosen to the Senate, 40. 

Bpe dies there, 50. 

estimate of Clay, 51. 

returns to his profession,51. 

attorney general of Massa- 
chusetts, 53. 

offered attorney general- 
ship of U. S., 54. 

would have accepted for- 
eign mission, 56. 

patent law, 56. 

accident at Dedhara, 56. 

close of public otlicial life, 
50. 

in constitutional conven- 
tion, CO. 

visit to Europe, 60. 

great speech on judiciary. 



CnOATE, KUFUS, lecture on "The Sea," 63. 
Taylor and Webster cam- 

paiL^u, 61. 
speech at Baltimore con- 
vention, 6o. 
eulogy on Webster, 66. 
opportunity as a lawyer, 72. 
history of Greeruv 73. 
use of narcotics. 74. 
supports Bucha-ian, 76. 
personal appearnnce, 70. 
love of books, 81. 
studies Ci-erman, S2. 
pi m of studv, 84. 
sociability, S7. 
humor, 87. 
keeping accounts, 94. 
fees, 95. 

opinion of Webster, 99. 
exactness of reterence, 102. 
taste for drama, 104. 
modesty, liKi. 

opposed to Saltonstall, 108. 
criminal practice, 110. 
favorite boolc on evidence, 

112. 
theory of study of law, IIS. 
practice of eloquence, 123. 
treatment of the bar, 125. 
Mr. Chandler's opinion of, 

120. 
bearing in court, 13.8. 
ideal of a judge^ 14T. 
method of arguing, 157. 
handling of evidenc>', 175. 
classic familiarity, 182. 
esprit de coiys, 104. 
Tirrell case, 216, 2::8. 
theory of expression, 24S- 

26 >. 
opinion of slavery, 201. 
vote for Buchanan, 292. 
supreme bench, 209. 
theory of collegiate educa- 
tion, 307. 
argument on removal of 

judicial officers, .304. 
city of Koxbury, 443. 
lecture on Rogers, 4S0. 
on revolutionary eloquence, 

404. 
economy of time, 501. 
home memories, 5' II. 
personal habits, 503. 
Cno.\TE vs. Burnham, 44. 
CiCEEO, 61. 

Choate' s estimate of, 82. 
tremulous voice, 105. 
vocabulary, 122. 
Choate' s familiarity with, 214. 
wronged, 317. 
in Choate' s lectures, 495. 
Clakeniion, 14, 124. 
Clay, Cassius M., 400. 
Clay, IIeney, encounter with Choate, 50. 
fine actor, 14-'. 
department of politics, 238. 
oratory, 244. 

urges Webster to leave Cab- 
inet, 205. 
naiural orator, 322. 



INDEX 



519 



Clay, Hen-rt, stylf, ?.4r). 

(!!ii)!ifi''s :ulrninition of, 500. 
Clayton, John M., '2S(i. 
Ci.iFiroai), Jons II., attorney general of 
Massachusetts, 53. 
In the lasii;! c ise, -IGS. 
Tilton f:isi-. 485. 
Cor;i73N-. witness iu D lUon case, 479. 
CoKi;, ■J41. 

on Littleton, £G3. 
CoNNTcvnouT, 425. 

COXSTVNTINOI-I.H, 101. 
(JONBTITUTION, '2i'.4. 

removal, liy address, .R95. 
Constitution A I. Convention, 00, '215, 504. 
Coij\;;u:!Y, Lord, 14. 
Coif.vix, Tom, -JOi. 
CojEir.rj, Hoston, fil."?. 
COUKT ST.iEKT, No. 4, 91. 
Co'.vLKB. Rev. Mr., 45. 
Cowr::i:, W.m., .'io^. 
Ckakts, Mr., case of insurance, 411. 
Crkssy, '2:!4. 
Cu.M.MiN(i8, Judge, Ohoafe enters office, 3'2. 

at the bar, 4S. 
CusEAN, i:!. 

master of the rolls, .5t. 

o|);)ortu lity as a lawyer, 72. 

compareil with Clioate, o52. 

ill thi^ Massey case, 4S:i. 
CtTBTis, D. U.. ris:;nation as judge Supreme 
t'ourt, 54. 
opinion of (Jhoate, 2'23. 
CtK^Tis, T. n., 470. 
Cu8in.su, Caleij, is, 2G2, 2S5. 



D. 



Dalton divorce case, 21"2, 477. 
Dai.ton, Fkank, 477. 
Dana, Ukiiard II., -231, 40:5. 
DAN.-i., UiciiAKu II., Jr., ruloiryof Choate,16. 
in the Dalton case, 4X0. 
.Dane Law School, '20. 

Choate enters, 31. 
Danvers, (Jhoate opens office at, 32. 
South, 30. 
petition, 373. 
Daktmoutu College, Choate's eulogy of 
Webster at, 10, 06. 
Choale e iters, 30. 
Deduam, Choate's accideat at, 50. 

South, -410. 
Demostuenes, is. 

Choate's estimate of, S2, 245, 
317. 
De Qdincet, Thomas, 24, 101. 

Idealist, 339. 
DEitisY, Lord, 17. 
De Stael, Madame, 401. 
Dewey, Judge, ilO. 

charge in Tirrell case, 223, 
224. 
Dextee, Sam., antagonist of Choale, 54. 

fame, 208. 
Diogenes, 04. 
D' Israeli, 21)0. 
Dosciiestf.e, 315. 
I)2Ki> Si^oTT Case, 223. 
Dudley, Mr., 448. 



Duee, Judge, 253. 
HUNKIUK, 424. 

Due ANT, II. F., 4S2, 497. 



E. 



Eaelv, Dr., 43C. 

Kastman and Fondey, 3.5.5. 

Kd.monhs, Gen. U. F.", 472. 

Ellis, Mr., counsel in Burns assault case, 

473. ' 

Eeskine, 13. 

chancellor, 54. 
opportunity as a lawyer, T2. 
correctness, 244. 
knowledge of men, 2.57. 
easily disturbed, 208. 
compared with Choate, 352. 
Essex bar, 13. 

county, 29. 
EuEiPiiiES, 305. 
I^UBOi'E, Choate visits, CO. 
Euryi)I<;e, 4'tO. 

I'.nsTATius, archbishop of Thessalonica, 101. 
KvKRKTr, Edward, panegyric of Cho:ite, 10. 
invited to deliver Web- 
ster's eulogy iu lioston, 
GO. 
tremulous gesture, 188. 
in Congress, 200. 
eloentionary power, 209. 
sketch of, 314. 
eulogy iu Faneuil llall, 
505. 



aneuil Hall, eulogy in. 16. 

exertion at, 57. 

eulogy by Everett, 505. 
ILLMOEE, Millard, 70, 282, 280. 
ONDEY, Eastman and, .355. 
ONTKNOV, 234. 

ox, Charles Jajmes, as a writer, 74, 251. 
RANCE, 287. 

RANKLiN, Sir John, 414. 
ifjcDERic of Prussia, 27;*. 
itr.MONT, John C, 7G, 291. 

HERE, 2SS. 

ULLAM, Stables, 221. 

ULTON, UOUT., 441. 



G. 



Gavazzi, Father, 344. 
Gladstone, 17. 
Giunos, 232, 243. 

compared with Bnrke, 494. 
Ginns, Marshal, 305. 
GiLLicsfiE, Kev. John B., case, 430. 
GoDDARD, Mr., 472. 
Goethe, 204. 

(JooiiRicH, Book of Orators, 260. 
Goodrich, CHas. B., 402. 
Gou(iH, John B., 344. 
Gove, Helen. 477. 

Gove, Mr., father of Mrs. Dalton, 481. 
Gbatt.v.n, Choate's opinion of, 101, 301. 



520 



INDEX. 



Grattax, voice, 155. 

to l)e reail, 251. 

trariuced, 317. 

opiaiou of Cli.itham, 340. 
Gkeenleaf, Prof., compares Choate with 

Webster, 53. 
Gbotb, n-2. 
G.ioTios, 317. 
GaoiToiir, ■2;j5. 
GaE23iKE=:, 234. 
GnicciARoixi, 293. 



H. 



Hale, John P., 473. 

Halifax, 2T. 

Hal I.AM. 4l5. 

IIa-V, ;;iI3. 

Hamilton, Alex., Ames's eulogy on, 5?. 

proparatioa of argu- 
m<i It, 105, '.Si. 

tra lucfd, 317. 

re,)lv to\Vashington,471. 
Hamtltox, Sir Wm , iSS. 
Has.ock, John, -JiiJ. 
Haxni:!al, 3 ) !. 

HAK2IXGT0N, 4'll. 

HA22ISON, Wm. II., 313. 

HAEri'oai), 4ii. 

H AiiTFoan Convention, 233. 

HaIIVKY, PETEa, o3J. 

Hayti, 330. 
Head, Mr., 221. 
Heai)F03I», Marquis of, 4S3. 
Henby, Patbicic, 2G1, 202. 

orator7, 2S5, 322. 
HiLLAKi), Geo. S., 02, 10.). 

argument at Dedham, 
■jS.'. 

coiivjrsatioa withChoate, 
294. 

iasur.ince case, 474. 
HOFF.MAN, Ogden, 14, 352. 

Holmes, Olive:'. Wendell, 213. 
Holt, Ju l„'e, 147. 
Hom;;2, Iliad, 1S5, 233. 
Hoo;iE3, .Vrchbishop, 124. 
H02VUE, 23!, 243. 
HoarENsius, 15. 

article on, 102. 
How.vsn vs. Bingham, 4S3. 
Ho.VE, Ml-., 443. 
HuiiKABD, Judge, 219. 
Hume, 232, 230. 



I. 



Iasioi, Joseph, vs. Brown, 46S. 
Ipswioii, birth-place of Cboate, 29. 

Turkey case at. 40. 

Old and New, 455. 
Ieving, Edward, 272. 
Isocuates, 122. 

J. 

Jackson, Andrew. 245. 
Jamaica Plain, 4.54. 
Jekfuky, Lord, 2.5S, 271. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 400. 
Jewett, Helen, 221. 



Johnson, Dr., estimate of msri, 23. 

answer to lioswell. 111. 

stvle,' 232, 243, 
Jones, Sir Wm., -iSO. 
Jones cs. Pickering, 44 
JosKi'H, King, 15S. 
Jrsn.viAN, 2SS. 
Juvenal, 233. 



K.\N8\8, 281. 

Kean, Edmund, 1S7. 
Kemisle, (Jiias., i53. 
Kr.MiJLE, Fanny, readings, 104. 
Kent Judge, 147. 
Kossuth, 100, 2.53, 343. 
eloquence, 495. 

L. 

Lafayette, 3'il. 
La Place, 236. 
Lawk.-^.nce, city of, 46G. 
Law3:;nce, .lOEL, 219. 
Legaee, H. S., 14. 

arlicle on Demosthenes, 245, 2S8. 
Lejii'KIerh, 303. 
Leonidas, 492. 
Li.n'den, ,Mr., 436. 
Liverpool, VjO). 

location, 420. 
LiVY, 403. 
LoDi, 22. 
London, 310. 

location, 4^6. 

Ciioate visits, CO. 
Longfellow, H. W., 2S9. 
LoED, at the Esse.x bar, 49. 

Choate' s opinion of, 285. 
Lowell, speech at, 213. 
L:jnt, at the Essex bar, 48. 
Ly.nn, 373. 



M. 



M.4.CAULAY, 09, 230, 243^ 271. 

History, '.87. 
Mackintosh, 239. 
Macsicady, 203. 
Madison, James, 400. 
Magenta, ISS. 
Maine, 4!9. 
Mansfield, Judge, 147, 275. 

MAKiiLEHEAD. :->Si. 

Maik^ellus, 25). 
Maksh, Geo3ge p., .34. 
M.\Ksn.^.LL, Judge, 147. 
Maeshfiixd, 210. 
Maktin, Capt,, 330. 

case, 416. 
Massachusetts, boundary of, 392. 
Massky vs. Marquis of Headford, 4S3. 
Mason, Jeeemiah, antagonist of Choate, 54. 

manner, 212. 
Mayflowee, The, 140. 
McCosMicK, 2.5.5. 
McDuffie, Choate's passage at arms with, 

5L 
McLean, .John, 285. 

Meecantile Liuraey, Boston, Choate's lec- 
tures before, 5i, 
4S9, 494. 



INDEX, 



521 



MnaaicK, Jml-^e, 473. 
M-.:3ZiLL, Amos «.. -219, 226. 
Mh:u2iLL, An -MS, 219. 

ope:is Tirrell case, 221. 
Methodist CinrartiiUASE, 2ol. 
MKXtci), w.ir in, -.Oi. 
.Mii.TON, J.Ji. 
Mt:iOT"s Ledgi;, 205. 
MiitAitHAU, '.07, 3J3. 

MlT|-021>, 2.3 ^ 

MoxTi:aav, 61$. 
iAIoiiTON-, Judge, 45. 
Mos::8, 2(J2. 

Mt. Vekno.v Aventte, 219. 
Mu.vii'03D 'Jasc, 37. 

N. 

Napoleon I., 22, 1S3. 
Napoleo.v Iir., 193. 
Nei.sox, A'linir.il, S3. 
XEa;;iii, case of. 257. 
New ()r.i,:;A>-s, 'iJl, 42C. 
New l!:;i)roiii>, 3:;6. 
Newi'ost, 23G. 
New Yoek, 2()1, 221. 

compared with Liverpool, SOX 

situation, 4'2(j. 
NiEinjno, 23.'). 

O. 

0"CoxNEi.t., Dan., 344. 
Old Colony Uailsoad, 210. 
Oiti'iiiX'S, 49o. 
Oris llAHsiaox Gbat, 243, 2.'i5. 

compared with Ever- 
ett, ■-'85. 

oratoriciil, 344. 
Otj8, Ja.mls, 428. 



Paeib, Choate visits 60, 811. 

Pahij, .John C. 40.5, 47.5. 

Pau:;e::, Chief .Instiee, 45. 

Pahkeii, S. n., -219, 223. 

Hakuv, I'apt , 3:jii. 

I'vaaoN-s, .Iiidff', 147, .389. 

Vka!;oiiv Institutk, opening of, 81. 

1'kkl, !*ir UoiJExr, 17, 242. 

I'EMSsiEa, M irshal, 287. 

l'r.ii!€i,r:s, 151, 303. 

I'EiJiixs Thomas, 462. 

Pr.::siA, .'JOt, 422. 

1'i:tt;;e Uvii.koad Roxjte, 476. 

Pii.:li>s, T. R, :,S5. 

I'lin.r.U's .VcAD"MY, 270. 

I'liiLLii's OT! Hvide ice, 112. 

HniLLi;'3, Wendell, 343. 

Pi(:KEii[.\<5, at tlie Essex bar, 43. 

Piesce, F2ASKLIN, 27G. 

PiNDAU, 277. 

Pixg2i;e, David, failure, 400. 

PlNKXEY, Wm., 14. 

Choate" s admiration of, 31. 

opportunity as a lawyer, 72. 

vanity, 171. 

length of argument, ISO. 

rhetoric, -5(5. 

mind, 263. 

easily disturbed, 26S. 



PiNKNEV, Wm., velocity of speech, 346. 

compared with Choate, 352. 
Pt.vTO, Duke, 330. 
Pitt, Willia-m, langu.age, l->2. 

oratory, 244, 27 1. 
Plautus, V?; 232. 
Plixy, tlie Younger, 184. 
Poi>E, Alex.vnder, 243. 
Pkentiss, 14. 

opportunity as a lawyer, 72. 

gaining, 2*6. 
I^nrsijOTT, \V,M. 11., '283. 
Pdtnam. Judge, 4.5. 
Pdt.nam's JIauazine, 312. 

article from, 321. 

Q. 

QUAKEK case, 1P5. 
QfiNTiLiAv, 122, 242. 

E. 
KAniEL, 351. 
Kandoli'ii, .Toirv, 51. 
Kantoul, KoHEaT, Jr., 265, 285. 

Choate's joke on,41.5. 
Reed, Mrs , 436. 
Rhode Island, boundary, 392. 
Rice, C<d., 1S.5. 
RioiiAED III., •:07, 4SS. 
Ridcevvay Lane, 221. 
R[0 Jani-ibo, 4S4. 
R()"Ei5TSO.v, 2.36. 
RoijiNso.v, 221. 
ROGEES, Sa.mdel, 2.S9. 

lecture on, 439. 
RoMiLLY, solii'itor general, 310. 
Rousseau, 267. 
RoxiiUKY, 443. 
Russia, 2.35. 

S. 

Salem, Choate studios at, 32. 

Choate's first appearance at conrt, 
in, 3(>. 

witchcraft revived at, 41. 

Clioale removes to, 39. 

speech at, '208. 

railroad, 375. 

tlie ladies of, 407. 
Sallust, 24.'. 

Saltonstall, at the Essex bar, 4"^. 
opposes Choate, lOS. 
San Pomingo, 330. 
Santa Anna, 63. 
Saigus, 373. 

S.vVAGE, Ez'kiel, pnlioe judsrc, 36. 
Scablett, Sir Ja.mes, 174, 330. 

SOHLEGEL, .304. 

Scipio, tomh of, 14. 

Scott, Gen., nominated for President, 65, 
259. 
election, 262. 
Scott, Walteh, 412. 
Seneca, 278. 
Sewall, Rev. Mr., 4.5. 
Sewaud, Wm. H , 2S2. 
Sji,v\v, Chirf Justice, 201. 
SiiAW M.S. Worcester R. R., 134, 211, 435. 
Suem, 303. 



522 



INDEX 



SiiF.siDAJJ, to bf read, '251. 

SUIEL, lUClIAKI) L.VLOR, 155, 302. 

Siiii.LAHEK, !it the Kssex bar, 43. 
SlIYLOCK, 1ST. 

SiDDOxs, Mrs., 1ST, 253. 

Sidney, 31". 

Shakespeare, 23'2. 

Small, John', 304. 

Smith, C.ipt.. 414. 

Smith, J. V. C, 4T3. 

S.MiTH, OLIVES, Will case, 385. 

Smitmsontax Institution', 63. 

Society, .Mass. Hist., OS, 1-29. 

X. E. Hist. Geiieal., 68. 

New Knglaud at New York, ISJ. 
soceates, 33.5. 
Solferino, 100. 
Solomon, '24!. 

SOLODQ3E, 3)0. 

Someus, 317. 

southey, s '•. 

Stanley, 17. 

St. Helena, '2'2, 203. 

Stockd.vle, div(iri-e case, 483. 

Stone, Dr. J. W., 410. 

Story, Judge, 147, '247, 263. 

description of Pinkney, 433. 
Suetonius, '242. 
Suffolk 15ar, iiioetinK of, 17. 
SnMNEi{, Bradford, 'MO. 
Sjmner, CuAELtS, in constitutional conven- 
tion, 60. 

office, 0-2. 

pot-ilion, 273. 

writes to Webst.^r, 295. 
SuMNEii, Mr., in the Dalton ease, 477. 
Swift, De.vn, 233. 
Switzerland, Clioate visits, 60 



Tacitus, 6!), 123, 23i?, 241, 2TT, 29X 

Talfouud, Noon, 2T5, 30J. 

Talma, ISX 

Taylor, Z.vchary, candidate for preside. i- 

cy, 63, 407. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 289. 
Tehritories, S. W., camels for, 03. 

TllilMiSTDJLES, 303. 
TlIlRLWALL, 232. 

Thompson, Orin, 471. 
Tiio.MPsoN, town of, 423. 
Thokwaldsen, I'.'S. 
TiiucYDiDES, 232, '242. 
Thurston, Mr , 410. 

TiDERIAS, 242. 

TiLTON', insurance case, 484. 
TuiE.-.LL, Ali-.ert J., case, 5-2, 216. 
TowLE, Mr. and Mrs., 432. 
Trajan, IS:'.. 

TRUiUNE, New York, 8'2, 494. 
Turner, Sharon, '232. 
Turkey case, 4it. 
Twiss' Livy, 233. 
Tyre, 426. 



W. 



Walker, Pres., 2TS. 
Walkei'., Ilev. Mr., 45. 
Walpole Raii.koad, 475. 
Ward, at the Essex bar, 48. 
W.vKREN, William, 104. 
W.\SHiiUEM, Judge, 359. 
Washington, author introduced to Choate 
at, 19. 
opinion of Choate at, 23. 
Ciioate goes to, 31. 
Washington, George, 318, 407. 
Waterloo, 235. 
Weustee, Daniel, opi-.iion of Choate, 10. 

compared with Piukney, 

31. 
goes into the Cabinet, ,50. 
candidate for Pres., 03. 
Choate' s eulogy of, OG. 
Choate's estimate of, 99. 
arc;uinent in Knapp case, 

141. 
strength in causes, 14.5. 
management of testi- 
mony, 181. 
resemblance to Choate, 

197. 
department of politics, 

238. 
his prime, 244. 
Adams and Jefferson 

eulogy, 252. 
compared withStory,'-63. 
Hayne speech, '290. 
Choate's article on, 317. 
Oliver Smith will case, 
385 
Weester, Prof, 213,^233, 242, 272. 
Wellington, Duke of, 04, 235. 
AVeymoutii, 219. 
Wheaton, 239. 
WlIlTEI-IELD, '25^ 235. 
Whiting, Mr., 440. 
Whitney, Inventor, 440. 
Wilde, Judge, 45. 

opinion of Tirroll ca-^o, 213. 
judge on do., 219, 2J4. 
Wilde, Sir J., 310. 
Williams, Uogeii, 393. 
Wilson, Prof., 2:!4, 259. 
Wilson, witness iu Craft's case, 411. 
Winthkop, '237. 
Wirt, Wm., 14. 

Choate enters office, 31. 
opportunity as a lawyer, 72. 
character, 271, 
Wisconsin, 35. 

WlTlllNGTON, 408. 

WoiiDiii-i'.Y, Judge, 246. 

WOODDURY va. Allen, 440. 

Woodward, Dr., 390. 

Woonsocket, 475. 

Worcester li. K., Shaw vs., 184, 211, iS5. 



Venice, 426. 
ViNET, 275. 
ViBGIL, 291. 



y. 



Yale Collkgt?, 19 
yobktown, 457. 



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